← Back to context

Comment by AbuAssar

14 hours ago

According to voidzero, this port is up to 8x faster than TS 7.0 & ~70% less memory.

Microsoft should seriously consider porting typescript to rust at this point

35 comments

AbuAssar

Reply
aleksandrm  13 hours ago

I'm pretty sure they already considered it before settling on Go. Allegedly, they chose Go because it was easier to translate to.

  • satvikpendem  11 hours ago

    That was pre-AI. Ironically if they waited just another year they could've done this port directly to Rust themselves.

ndr  14 hours ago

I wonder how more frustrating is it to work on the compiler in rust vs go.

IIRC at the time of the port to go they wanted fast test and compile time, of course it's a different era now.

  • lemagedurage  12 hours ago

    That's interesting. A go version to iterate on the code and a rust version to run the code might be an optimal split here.

tgv  13 hours ago

Idk. Apart from the fact that benchmarks are generally of questionable value, what's the point? Is the TS compiler unbearably slow?

  • TheMrZZ  13 hours ago

    The success of "modern" CLI tools written in Rust (uv, oxlint, turbopack) show there's a clear demand for faster tools in general.

    Also, faster feedback loop is crucial for AIs, so I guess this makes sense.

    • pjmlp  13 hours ago

      What they show is that JavaScript should never have left the browser into the backend.

      Don't rewrite into Rust, Go, Java, .NET, Zig, Odin, whatever.

      Start with them directly.

  • pier25  11 hours ago

    > Is the TS compiler unbearably slow?

    It's not. Even the JS compiler is still fast enough for many projects given the single core improvements in hardware (eg Apple Silicon).

Rapzid  13 hours ago

Up to 8x faster seems kinda of a crazy claim. 8x faster at what?! TS 7.0 is reasonably well optimized and compiles VSCode in well under 10 seconds..

This can type check and compile VSCode in less than a second?