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pizlonator 12 hours ago

That explains why:

- the architecture is idiotic.

- they have zero credible perf numbers.

I plan to benchmark it using generally accepted methods.

Porffor makes careful trade offs that make sense and is benchmarked in a way that I can believe.

(Source: I make dynamic languages fast for a living)

▲ bbor 12 hours ago | parent [-]

Putting aside the whole “team of professionals putting out a product vs solo dev fine tuning their opus” of it all:

Can you clarify what about the architecture is ‘idiotic’? Not trying to catch you or demand a defense, just looking for a vague description. I don’t even know how to start examining the architecture of something like this.

▲ pizlonator 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah

- using quickjs at all in a thing that needs perf. Quickjs is hilariously slow. Midwits use it because it has “quick” in the name.

- using floats for numbers and deferring int optimizations for later. Inferring ints is like half the problem of fast JS.

- rejecting inadequately annotated or too dynamic code without a whole heck of a lot of self-reflection about how unlikely that is to work out.

The observation that languages that are even slightly dynamic need dynamic JIT opts is very old; folks figured that out in the 80s.

This project reeks of weapons grade AI psychosis

▲ simonw 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

As far as I can tell they pull in QuickJS (actually quickjs-ng) only in the case where the program has untyped dependencies that still need to be run by an interpreter - and they chose that library because it's pretty small (620KB). Did I miss something, are they using it outside of that purpose?

▲ pizlonator 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

They will have untyped dependencies. That’s how the TS/JS ecosystem works.

Note that “untyped dependency” means any code that says `any`.

▲ simonw 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

They won't have untyped dependencies for situations where someone used Scriptc as a way to build a fast binary executable for some custom-written TypeScript, which was the first use-case that came to mind for me.

Being able to build small, fast binaries without writing them in C or Rust - if you're already fluent in TypeScript - seems like a valuable capability.

▲ pizlonator 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, being able to build small and fast binaries in TS would be a valuable capability, which is why basically all of us who work in this space have thought of this idea and rejected it after going deep on it. This isn’t a new idea.

CanadaHonk has gotten further than the rest of us. It’s surprising and impressive.

You’re only replying to the quickjs issue I raised, but it’s not the only issue. Their approach to numbers is broken. Their approach to measurement is broken. The quickjs thing raises another red flag: it suggests to me that they are using reference counting, not GC. That’s guaranteed to make them too slow to be useful. (If they weren’t using RC, then they’d have a hard time on the boundary to quickjs.)

As to the `any` issue, let me explain it in a way you’ll appreciate. I asked Claude how likely it is that TS code uses any, and it found:

- 79.5% of TS repos use any explicitly. So, about 4/5 chance that newly written dep-free TS code will use it.

- the explicit any type is about as common as Boolean and void.

- a third of inferred types are any. That’s huge.

So, if you don’t believe me, then at least believe Claude: any is a super common type, so they will be falling off into quickjs a lot.

Oh, and in case it isn’t clear, quickjs-ng is no better than quickjs. They’re the same thing for the purpose of perf

▲ simonw 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The QuickJS thing doesn't seem like a big deal to me, provided the documentation makes it clear that code will run slower if you use Any.

If I was using this project for something I'd expect to write custom TypeScript for it.

The floats rather than integers thing does look bad though. I tried compiling their fibonacci example to C (--backend c) and got this:

  static double sc_f_fib(double sc_l_n_0) { /* /private/tmp/fib.ts:1 */
    double sc_t0 = sc_l_n_0;
    double sc_t1 = 2.0;
    bool sc_t2 = sc_t0 < sc_t1;
    double sc_t3;
    if (sc_t2) {
      double sc_t4 = sc_l_n_0;
      sc_t3 = sc_t4;
    } else {
      double sc_t5 = sc_l_n_0;
      double sc_t6 = 1.0;
      double sc_t7 = sc_t5 - sc_t6;
      double sc_t8 = sc_f_fib(sc_t7);
      double sc_t9 = sc_l_n_0;
      double sc_t10 = 2.0;
      double sc_t11 = sc_t9 - sc_t10;
      double sc_t12 = sc_f_fib(sc_t11);
      double sc_t13 = sc_t8 + sc_t12;
      sc_t3 = sc_t13;
    }
    return sc_t3; /* /private/tmp/fib.ts:2 */
  }

▲

slopinthebag 11 hours ago | parent [-]

If you’re writing Typescript with zero dependencies and trying to target native I feel like it makes more sense to write it in a different language like Rust or Go. The main reason for this I think is getting cheap perf wins by running existing code natively.

▲

timcobb 9 hours ago | parent [-]

For some new custom small thing you'd be better off using not this though, right?

	▲	queenkjuul 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Personally i can kind of see a use case here. I've shipped some simple server side packages as a "compiled" Node single executable written in TS, but you're stuck with the big overhead of Node. I've just been teaching myself Go, also a single binary but without the overhead. But in Go i miss the expressiveness of the TS type system sometimes.

▲ skeledrew 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> if you don’t believe me, then at least believe Claude

I had to do a triple take on this.

▲ sroussey 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There is always AssemblyScript

▲ slopinthebag 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think more human effort is going into defending this project then what was put into the project itself haha.

▲ vips7L 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

So like less than 1% of the time? What part of the JS ecosystem doesn’t depend on a mountain of untyped dependencies?

▲ torginus 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Devil's advocate - this is for the backend. You get to control your dependencies there, and I'd say Vercel controls its own stack, so they can replace deps as they go by submitting patches/slopforking projects to remove incompatible features.

▲ piker 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> "As far as I can tell they..."

This phrase I think highlights the fundamental issue for a lot of folks that would otherwise consider adopting a project like this written by humans.

▲ anematode 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> deferring int optimizations for later

This part made me laugh out loud

▲ Altern4tiveAcc 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> using floats for numbers and deferring int optimizations for later. Inferring ints is like half the problem of fast JS.

For a project like this, isn't it worth introducing a TS type for Ints? Since they are trying to leverage TypeScript anyway...

▲ drunkenmagician 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"This project reeks of weapons grade AI psychosis" - fantastic quote: I will shamelessly steal & use. Apologies to pizlonator

▲ Tadpole9181 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

So you don't actually have real criticisms of the architecture at all...?

▲ jeswin 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Just randomly:

1. TS only has a "number" type. But what type of number is it? This is doable safely via keywords (or known markers), or sometimes via analysis, but I couldn't find it in the README.

2. A compiler that works only on macOS?