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A pure JavaScript implementation of Git for Node and browsers

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Re: A pure JavaScript implementation of Git for Node and browsers

#11

Post by dfabulich »

kbenson wrote: post #10

I think it's interesting how there's two phenomena that seem to be related to me that get posted here and seem to get treated with different responses. One the one hand, we have software originally written in C/C++ being rewritten in Rust (not often, sometimes just conceptualized), and there's often a real push back by some people about how it's a waste and not useful. On the other, we have software rewritten in Java…

IMO, this is because there's a general attitude about porting to Rust that porting to Rust, by itself, makes a material improvement in the quality of the software (e.g. reliability, performance, readability), and that these improvements that can't be achieved in C/C++. Entrenched C developers then rise to the debate to defend their language.

This debate has happened often enough that any time someone ports something to Rust, even if it's just for fun or for the author to learn more Rust, C/C++ advocates see it as an attack on their language, and bite back.

Re: A pure JavaScript implementation of Git for Node and browsers

#13

Post by jcelerier »

kbenson wrote: post #10

I think it's interesting how there's two phenomena that seem to be related to me that get posted here and seem to get treated with different responses. One the one hand, we have software originally written in C/C++ being rewritten in Rust (not often, sometimes just conceptualized), and there's often a real push back by some people about how it's a waste and not useful. On the other, we have software rewritten in Java…

> One the one hand, we have software originally written in C/C++ being rewritten in Rust (not often, sometimes just conceptualized), and there's often a real push back by some people about how it's a waste and not useful. On the other, we have software rewritten in Javascript, which people are generally very accepting of, even if they don't plan to use it.

I'll be fair, while I think that both are useless, the second is so far there that I don't even take it seriously - more like a bad joke.

Re: A pure JavaScript implementation of Git for Node and browsers

#15

Post by finchisko »

kbenson wrote: post #10

I think it's interesting how there's two phenomena that seem to be related to me that get posted here and seem to get treated with different responses. One the one hand, we have software originally written in C/C++ being rewritten in Rust (not often, sometimes just conceptualized), and there's often a real push back by some people about how it's a waste and not useful. On the other, we have software rewritten in Java…

Understand your frustration. But on positive hand, javascript opens new opportunities like using git in the browser (even though meaningful use case is yet to be shown, but there is chance it will be found).

On other hand rust implementation brings "just better security" (using sarcasm here for brevity). Yes, it probably could be ported to js (wasm) too, but until somebody does that...

Re: A pure JavaScript implementation of Git for Node and browsers

#17

Post by egeozcan »

ryaniscool wrote: post #6

I did something similar a few years ago. https://github.com/ryanackley/git-html5.js . A lot of the links don't work in the README anymore. It was more of a "this would be cool!" project rather than a library I wanted everyone to use for the next 20 years. One of things that scared me is the responsibility that bugs in something like this could be catastrophic to someone's work. As I built my git library I realized a…

I can't begin to describe how sad I am that we didn't end up using mercurial everywhere.

Re: A pure JavaScript implementation of Git for Node and browsers

#18

Post by niftich »

kbenson wrote: post #10

I think it's interesting how there's two phenomena that seem to be related to me that get posted here and seem to get treated with different responses. One the one hand, we have software originally written in C/C++ being rewritten in Rust (not often, sometimes just conceptualized), and there's often a real push back by some people about how it's a waste and not useful. On the other, we have software rewritten in Java…

Languages don't live in isolation. They are products of their time and their fates are tied to their ecosystems. JS is a popular porting target because the browser is a widely-deployed environment, but also because platforms like Node and Electron are in widespread use, and therefore targeting JS enables targeting some frontends and some backends with the same code. This project even takes special care in supporting the differences between execution environments.

Ports to languages that compete in the same solution space are more prone to drawing criticism because, almost by definition, ports are designed to be feature-comparable, yet cross-language rewrites benefit both from the thorough examination that naturally must take place during a rewrite, and the different features offered by the target language. Most arguments about cross-language rewrites are proxy arguments about whether the bulk of the benefit comes from starting over, or mainly from a tool that offers different -- say, more intuitive, or less error-prone -- ways of capturing what the programmer means; intermingled with a fair bit of language favoritism.

Re: A pure JavaScript implementation of Git for Node and browsers

#19

Post by a-dub »

kbenson wrote: post #10

I think it's interesting how there's two phenomena that seem to be related to me that get posted here and seem to get treated with different responses. One the one hand, we have software originally written in C/C++ being rewritten in Rust (not often, sometimes just conceptualized), and there's often a real push back by some people about how it's a waste and not useful. On the other, we have software rewritten in Java…

It's open source. If you don't like it, don't use it.

Rewriting git in Javascript seems pretty useless to me, but who knows, maybe it was a fun challenge for the author.

Re: A pure JavaScript implementation of Git for Node and browsers

#20

Post by TAForObvReasons »

kbenson wrote: post #10

I think it's interesting how there's two phenomena that seem to be related to me that get posted here and seem to get treated with different responses. One the one hand, we have software originally written in C/C++ being rewritten in Rust (not often, sometimes just conceptualized), and there's often a real push back by some people about how it's a waste and not useful. On the other, we have software rewritten in Java…

Without being too reductive, a JS implementation of anything represents new possibilities (running in the web browser or other environments), whereas a rust port doesn't expand the surface area. To give a comparison, critiques of rust ports are similar to the critiques of porting everything to node.js a few years ago -- most of the benefit comes from rewriting and applying lessons learned from the existing implementations.
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