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Port React Compiler to Rust

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Re: Port React Compiler to Rust

#21

Post by LoganDark »

voidUpdate wrote: post #19
LoganDark wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, TypeScript?

Isnt the benefit of rust that it's memory safe? Is typescript not?

The benefit of Rust over TypeScript is that Rust is faster.

TypeScript is memory-safe, but you can't really control where the memory comes from. In Rust you have structs, traits, references and all sorts of things to control both your memory usage and your memory efficiency, and you just don't really get that in TypeScript. Plus, in Rust it's a lot easier to utilize multithreading -- JS is notoriously tedious to parallelize (message-passing between JS workers is a bit annoying compared to structured concurrency in Rust)

Re: Port React Compiler to Rust

#22

Post by molf »

LoganDark wrote: post #20
molf wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OXC is not the only consumer, so using the OXC AST wouldn't particularly make sense? I thought it was pretty well explained in the PR: > Note that the conversion from any AST into our HIR is complex, and we can only maintain one version. Hence we've aligned on using a Babel-like AST as our public API. Another key point is that we don't yet implement our own scope analysis (since the TS version of the compiler relied…

I saw, I just don't understand the rationale for picking Babel over OXC or something else as the interchange format -- other than "we were already doing it this way". After all, you know what they say about temporary solutions.

So isn't not changing more sensible than changing to an arbitrary alternative?

The current developers surely are more familiar with the Babel representation than OXC, so why switch?

Re: Port React Compiler to Rust

#25

Post by LoganDark »

molf wrote: post #22
LoganDark wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw, I just don't understand the rationale for picking Babel over OXC or something else as the interchange format -- other than "we were already doing it this way". After all, you know what they say about temporary solutions.

So isn't not changing more sensible than changing to an arbitrary alternative? The current developers surely are more familiar with the Babel representation than OXC, so why switch?

What I mean is, if you're going to rewrite it in Rust, why rewrite Babel rather than leaning on the existing ecosystem? I know they're not actually rewriting Babel, just reusing the semantic layout of its AST, but it's feeling a bit like the MediaWiki parser situation to me (roughly "if we started from scratch today, we wouldn't choose to have it this way, but we started a different way before, and it's been a difficult path to get to where we want to be"). Maybe that's a fairly remote analogy but it feels similar.

Re: Port React Compiler to Rust

#26

Post by bhy »

Trung0246 wrote: post #2

Curious but can we use lean4 as port target instead of Rust?

I don’t think lean4 compiled code is as efficient as rust. For verification purposes, there are some tools allowing formal verification of rust code.

Re: Port React Compiler to Rust

#27

Post by giancarlostoro »

Surac wrote: post #23

rewrite to rust using AI sound like meme now.

Speaks volumes to the strengths of the language, also speaks volumes that LLMs lift the barrier of entry for Rust programming, the borrow checker woes can be offloaded to the model, you focus on all the other programming logic.

Whats funny is I had been using Rust more with Claude because of this, and before Anthropic did their rewrite of Bun I tried a Rust rewrite of a C# project I had laying around (.NET 3.5 from back in 2008) it wasnt perfect but its nearly there now, mostly for fun, and I did it because for a little while I realized LLMs can be useful for more serious refactors, and figured it might be good for a language rewrite. Sure enough.

I think rewriting tooling that takes text and transforms it in a language like Rust is fine for JS projects, so is Go, which is why TypeScript is migrating to Go. The “free” optimized speed increases are worth it, at the temporary cost of dealing with the migration for a year or two, which with LLMs trims down the initial work into a week effort it seems? Wild.

Re: Port React Compiler to Rust

#28

Post by giancarlostoro »

Trung0246 wrote: post #2

Curious but can we use lean4 as port target instead of Rust?

Never heard of it, and I nerd out on programming languages. Reminds me of a convo yesterday with my coworkers where I noted I never heard of Sheerpower a language someone who worked there had done, and I have heard of languages so old and niche most people are shocked.

My first programming interview my interviewer was like what the heck are you doing with D? And he noted he has a room full of devs where nobody knows what D is.

Re: Port React Compiler to Rust

#29

Post by epolanski »

LoganDark wrote: post #21
voidUpdate wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isnt the benefit of rust that it's memory safe? Is typescript not?

The benefit of Rust over TypeScript is that Rust is faster. TypeScript is memory-safe, but you can't really control where the memory comes from. In Rust you have structs, traits, references and all sorts of things to control both your memory usage and your memory efficiency, and you just don't really get that in TypeScript. Plus, in Rust it's a lot easier to utilize multithreading -- JS is notoriously tedious to para…

Quite sure performance and not memory safety is the issue here.

Re: Port React Compiler to Rust

#30

Post by fg137 »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #27
Surac wrote: post #23

rewrite to rust using AI sound like meme now.

Speaks volumes to the strengths of the language, also speaks volumes that LLMs lift the barrier of entry for Rust programming, the borrow checker woes can be offloaded to the model, you focus on all the other programming logic. Whats funny is I had been using Rust more with Claude because of this, and before Anthropic did their rewrite of Bun I tried a Rust rewrite of a C# project I had laying around (.NET 3.5 from b…

> you focus on all the other programming logic

Does that actually happen?

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