Comment by sheepscreek

13 hours ago

Ah took me a while to understand the reason behind this.

It wasn’t “let’s build a faster Rust based Typescript compiler” at all. That was a nice side-effect.

They needed a Typescript compiler that can run on their WASM only sandbox. So the only existing option was to export tsc Go to WASM, but that comes with the full Go runtime.

And to avoid that cost, they experimented with a Rust compiler and turns out it’s even faster than the reference tsc/Go implementation.

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sheepscreek

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simplesocieties  4 hours ago

> It wasn’t “let’s build a faster Rust based Typescript compiler” at all. That was a nice side-effect.

Then why are the performance graphs the headliner topic in the article? The WASM sandbox is barely a footnote.

  • sheepscreek  2 hours ago

    > Then why are the performance graphs the headliner topic in the article?

    If you’ve got it, flaunt it?

    > The WASM sandbox is barely a footnote.

    This one is a real head scratcher. The sandbox was clearly what set them on this path.

    Maybe they believe the performance gains are worthy of being discussed by themselves?