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A better streams API is possible for JavaScript

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21–30 of 167 posts

Re: A better streams API is possible for JavaScript

#21

[flagged]

> high-performance data processing tools in JS I may be naive in asking this, but what leads someone to building high perf data tools in JS? JS doesn't seem to me like it would be the tool of choice for such things

Browsers

Re: A better streams API is possible for JavaScript

#22
post #7

> The problems aren't bugs; they're consequences of design decisions that may have made sense a decade ago, but don't align with how JavaScript developers write code today. > I'm not here to disparage the work that came before — I'm here to start a conversation about what can potentially come next. Terrible LLM-slop style. Is Mr Snell letting an LLM write the article for him or has he just appropriated the style?

What was it specifically about the style that stood out as incongruous, or that hindered comprehension? What was it that made you stumble and start paying close attention to the style rather than to the message? I am looking at the two examples, and I can't see anything wrong with them, especially in the context of the article. They both employ the same rhetorical technique of antithesis, a juxtaposition of contrasting ideas. Surely people wrote like this before? Surely no-one complained?

Re: A better streams API is possible for JavaScript

#23
post #9
post #7

> The problems aren't bugs; they're consequences of design decisions that may have made sense a decade ago, but don't align with how JavaScript developers write code today. > I'm not here to disparage the work that came before — I'm here to start a conversation about what can potentially come next. Terrible LLM-slop style. Is Mr Snell letting an LLM write the article for him or has he just appropriated the style?

You’ve got it backwards: LLMs were trained on human writing and appropriated our style.

Partially true. They've been trained and then aligned towards a preferred style. They don't use em-dashes because they are over-represented in the training material (majority of people don't use them).

Re: A better streams API is possible for JavaScript

#24

[flagged]

> high-performance data processing tools in JS I may be naive in asking this, but what leads someone to building high perf data tools in JS? JS doesn't seem to me like it would be the tool of choice for such things

I have a SaaS project where the backend is in JS. I also have some data processing to do with large file (several TB). Doing it is in JS is more convenient as I can reuse code from the backend, and it is also the language I know best.

Performance-wise, I get about half the throughput I had with the same processsing done it rust, which doesn't change anything for my use-case.

However that's not really relevant to the context of the post as I'm using node.js streams which are both saner and fast. I'm guessing that the post is relevant to people using server-side runtimes that only implement web streams.

Re: A better streams API is possible for JavaScript

#26
post #7

> The problems aren't bugs; they're consequences of design decisions that may have made sense a decade ago, but don't align with how JavaScript developers write code today. > I'm not here to disparage the work that came before — I'm here to start a conversation about what can potentially come next. Terrible LLM-slop style. Is Mr Snell letting an LLM write the article for him or has he just appropriated the style?

Heh, I was using emdashes and tricolons long before LLMs appropriated the style but I did let the agent handle some of the details on this. Honestly, it really is just easier sometimes... Especially for blogs posts like this when I've also got a book I'm writing, code to maintain etc. Use tools available to make life easier.

Re: A better streams API is possible for JavaScript

#27
post #7

> The problems aren't bugs; they're consequences of design decisions that may have made sense a decade ago, but don't align with how JavaScript developers write code today. > I'm not here to disparage the work that came before — I'm here to start a conversation about what can potentially come next. Terrible LLM-slop style. Is Mr Snell letting an LLM write the article for him or has he just appropriated the style?

The idea is well articulated and comes across clear. What’s the issue? Taking a magnifying glass to the whole article to find sentence structure you think is “LLM-slop” is an odd way to dismiss the article entirely.

I’ve read my fair share of LLM slop. This doesn’t qualify.

Re: A better streams API is possible for JavaScript

#28
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> high-performance data processing tools in JS I may be naive in asking this, but what leads someone to building high perf data tools in JS? JS doesn't seem to me like it would be the tool of choice for such things

Browsers

Since when are browsers themselves built in JavaScript? Mainstream, fast ones?

Re: A better streams API is possible for JavaScript

#30

[flagged]

> high-performance data processing tools in JS I may be naive in asking this, but what leads someone to building high perf data tools in JS? JS doesn't seem to me like it would be the tool of choice for such things

You don't always have a choice on where you deliver your software. It'd be nice to have good tools wherever you are forced to work.
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