Perry Compiles TypeScript directly to executables using SWC and LLVM • Hacker News Board

Re: Perry Compiles TypeScript directly to executables using SWC and LLVM

#101

Post by networked » Sat, May 30, 2026, 9:19 PM UTC

metaquestions wrote: post #16

afavour wrote: post #5

Fascinating. I've written cross platform (WASM, iOS, Android) libraries with Rust before and had a good time but Rust can be a pain too. Cross-platform Typescript is a really interesting proposition. That said, the more I think about it the more dubious I am. The site boasts no runtime dependencies but clearly it’s going to need things like a garbage collector, you can’t just magic that requirement away. At a certain…

how do one tell when text is ai generated - honest question. What are the tell tale signs?

I have collected some links about AI's writing style and how to recognize it: https://dbohdan.com/ai-writing-style. You can start with https://buildingalone.substack.com/p/your-words.

The most reliable automatic detector right now must be https://www.pangram.com/. If Pangram says something is AI, it is very likely AI. Sometimes it concludes more unusual AI text is human-written; Talkie tricks it! (https://x.com/aliceisplaying/status/2059778915275567129.)

Re: Perry Compiles TypeScript directly to executables using SWC and LLVM

#102

Post by ryanshrott » Sun, May 31, 2026, 2:28 AM UTC

evil_buzzard wrote: post #4

the claim of "no runtime" is a bit dubious... you're telling me that you're statically linking a full, modern UI library into every app?

Static linking just puts the runtime inside the binary. The binary size is the real clue here.

Re: Perry Compiles TypeScript directly to executables using SWC and LLVM

#103

Post by amlug » Sun, May 31, 2026, 4:45 AM UTC

evil_buzzard wrote: post #4

the claim of "no runtime" is a bit dubious... you're telling me that you're statically linking a full, modern UI library into every app?

Yes. One that makes use of the underlying UI library for the specific system (macOS UI, Win32 UI, GTK4, ....)

The Perry runtime is surprisiginly small, especially since we (LLVM rather) strip out all that is no needed in one of the compile steps.

Re: Perry Compiles TypeScript directly to executables using SWC and LLVM

#104

Post by amlug » Sun, May 31, 2026, 4:45 AM UTC

lietuvis wrote: post #98

amlug wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey smasher164, thanks for bringing up the concern. I am proggeramlug (or amlug, either way), Ralph, founder of perry. Yes, Perry is heavily AI-assisted - similar to the Bun to Rust port is too. Your concern is real and I don't claim to have all the answers for that. I do know that AI is much better at finding bugs when it comes to compilers than most humans will ever be. Decoding bytecode and knowing what it should…

Why do you think ai is better at finding bugs?

Because it can debug the LL output code directly and much more efficiently than humans could.

Re: Perry Compiles TypeScript directly to executables using SWC and LLVM

#105

Post by [deleted] » Sun, May 31, 2026, 4:30 PM UTC

jeswin wrote: post #90

moron4hire wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dynamic JS-style code is not supported, for example adding a function or a field into an object, prototype-based class modifications etc. FYI, just in case you didn't know, there is an ExpandoObject type in the System.Dynamic namespace that you could use to do this. IDK if you want to, but it's one of those less common .NET features that people tend to not be aware of.

tsonic uses NativeAOT by default, and DLR/System.Dynamic isn't supported in NativeAOT. There are switches in tsonic to give you MSIL, but that's used mostly for testing or for compat reasons.

[deleted]

Re: Perry Compiles TypeScript directly to executables using SWC and LLVM

#106

Post by queenkjuul » Sun, May 31, 2026, 9:59 PM UTC

ventana wrote: post #100

amlug wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey ventana, (I'm the founder of Perry) thanks for giving it a try and let me be upfront with you: Compiling express has been one of the hardest challenges for Perry. I'm 99% sure it still does not work out of the box just yet - which is why we pivoted to fastify more than express. That said, the last few days we made great progress to get Perry to compile packages "lik" Express (lot's of dynamic imports) much better…

Thanks for following up! Don't get me wrong, I'll be totally excited to replace my card game app backend with a static binary, that's why I immediately went on trying Perry :) Just to give you an idea what I'm trying to achieve: I'm currently hosting it on a single VPS. Node is handling the average of 30 qps, peaking up to 100 qps, just fine, with P99 latency being safely below 100ms and only occasional spikes of P99…

Just to chime in, i was having decent luck compiling Express apps to a binary using the experimental Node built-in executable feature--two years ago i was able to ship a single-binary Node-Express server without much headache.

Doesn't avoid the runtime, but it made deployment really easy.

Otherwise, I'm just using Go for backend now.

Re: Perry Compiles TypeScript directly to executables using SWC and LLVM

#107

Post by queenkjuul » Sun, May 31, 2026, 10:07 PM UTC

metaquestions wrote: post #16

afavour wrote: post #5

Fascinating. I've written cross platform (WASM, iOS, Android) libraries with Rust before and had a good time but Rust can be a pain too. Cross-platform Typescript is a really interesting proposition. That said, the more I think about it the more dubious I am. The site boasts no runtime dependencies but clearly it’s going to need things like a garbage collector, you can’t just magic that requirement away. At a certain…

how do one tell when text is ai generated - honest question. What are the tell tale signs?

It's the UI design that screams it for me -- i didn't even read anything, the initial page load just screeched "AI design". There are definite cliches in web UI that they always go for. I'd be hard pressed to fully explain it all here but if you take note, you'll see many more sites with the same pattern (like click any of the example apps on the homepage--they have practically identical website design)

Eta: gradients on text, gradients everywhere, monospace badges, cards for everything, emojis everywhere...

Perry and Hone and the dB meter link all have the same homepage with slightly different spin

Re: Perry Compiles TypeScript directly to executables using SWC and LLVM

#108

Post by queenkjuul » Mon, Jun 01, 2026, 1:45 AM UTC

amlug wrote: post #97

smasher164 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On other sites, like github and reddit. This exchange was funny though. He eventually gets called out by the other commenter to stop responding with an LLM: https://github.com/PerryTS/perry/issues/139#issuecomment-429...

This exchange is actually funny. Now, to tell you the truth, for a lot of tickets AI does generate legit the better answers than me. And my time is quite limited. That said, I will always stand behind my posts, AI-assisted or not. Now the thread you specifically point at here is ironic in many ways. The other guy says "and claude won't tell you that", while in fact Claude said (in my response) the exact thing he clai…

I seriously cannot fathom how a person chooses to use an LLM to write an Internet comment, so out of genuine curiosity, what drives a person to do that?

Do you somehow find yourself with hundreds of comments to write and nary a moment to spare? Do you genuinely think Claude can better answer questions in your domain of expertise than you can? Is English a second language and not one you're comfortable writing in?

Re: Perry Compiles TypeScript directly to executables using SWC and LLVM

#109

Post by AlexeyBelov » Mon, Jun 01, 2026, 6:59 AM UTC

queenkjuul wrote: post #108

amlug wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This exchange is actually funny. Now, to tell you the truth, for a lot of tickets AI does generate legit the better answers than me. And my time is quite limited. That said, I will always stand behind my posts, AI-assisted or not. Now the thread you specifically point at here is ironic in many ways. The other guy says "and claude won't tell you that", while in fact Claude said (in my response) the exact thing he clai…

I seriously cannot fathom how a person chooses to use an LLM to write an Internet comment, so out of genuine curiosity, what drives a person to do that? Do you somehow find yourself with hundreds of comments to write and nary a moment to spare? Do you genuinely think Claude can better answer questions in your domain of expertise than you can? Is English a second language and not one you're comfortable writing in?

> what drives a person to do that

There are courses on how to use an LLM to better market to people, to do PR, to communicate with other people. Grifters don't care about the human aspect or whatever, their goal is to grift. Comments and other text are just a means to an end (money).