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A 10x Faster TypeScript

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Re: A 10x Faster TypeScript

#151

Post by homebrewer »

dimgl wrote: post #138

I'm really surprised by this visceral reaction to not choosing Rust. Go is a great language and I'd choose it for a majority of projects over Rust just based off of the simplicity of the language and the ability to spin up developers on it quickly. Microsoft is a big corporation. Why _not_ use Go?

> Why _not_ use Go?

Because of its truly primitive type system, and because Microsoft already has a much better language — C#, which is both faster and can be more high level and more low-level at the same time, depending on your needs.

I am a complete nobody to argue with the likes of Hejlsberg, but it feels like AOT performance problems could be solved if tsc needed it, and tsc adoption of C# would also help push C#/.NET adoption. Once again, Microsoft proves that it's a bunch of unrelated companies at odds with each other.

Re: A 10x Faster TypeScript

#152

Post by dimitropoulos »

pseudopersonal wrote: post #37
dimitropoulos wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

look, not to argue with a stranger on hacker news, lol, but genuine calm question here: is this really a helpful nit? I know what you're getting at but the blogpost itself doesn't imply that JavaScript is 10x faster. I could complain, about your suggested change, that it's really `build and typecheck` time. It's a title. Sometimes they don't have _all_ the context. That's ok.

It is for me. If someone says TypeScript is faster than X, they rarely mean the build time. I understand other people's points about TypeScript not being a runtime at all and only being a compiler, but when casually saying "TypeScript is faster than say ruby", people do not mean the compiler.

well, thanks for explaining. we might just simply disagree here. when I hear "TypeScript" I think of TypeScript, and when I hear "JavaScript" I think of JavaScript. I know what you mean re: casually speaking, but this is a blogpost from the TypeScript team. That context is there, too. I think if the same title were from an AWS release note, I'd totally see what you mean.

Re: A 10x Faster TypeScript

#153

Post by pjmlp »

rob74 wrote: post #146
pjmlp wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not AOT compiled C#, given the team's historical background?

Seeing that Hejlsberg started out with Turbo Pascal and Delphi, and that Go also has a lot of Pascal-family heritage, he might hold some sympathy for Go as well...

Yes there is that irony, however when these kind of decisions are made, by folks with historical roots on how .NET and C# came to be, then .NET team cannot wonder why .NET keeps lagging adoption versus other ecosystems, on companies that aren't traditional Microsoft shops.

Re: A 10x Faster TypeScript

#154

Post by neonsunset »

duckerude wrote: post #119
tinco wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just a pity, it's very surprising. In my eyes Go is a direct competitor of C#. Whenever you pick Go for a project, C# should have been a serious consideration. Hejlsberg designed C# and that a team that he's an authority figure in would opt to use Go, a language which frankly I would not consider to build a compiler in is astounding. Not saying that in a judgemental way, I'm just genuinely surprised. What do…

Anders Hejlsberg explains here: https://youtu.be/10qowKUW82U?t=1154 . TL;DW: - C# is bytecode-first, Go targets native code. While C# does have AOT capabilities nowadays this is not as mature as Go's and not all platforms support it. Go also has somewhat better control over data layout. They wanted to get as low-level as possible while still having garbage collection. - This is meant to be something of a 1:1 port rat…

This is shockingly out-of-date statement by Anders.

I'm not sure what's going on, I guess he's just not involved with the runtime side of .NET at all to actually know where the capability sits circa 2024/2025. But really, it's a terrible situation to be in. Especially just how worse langdev UX in Go is compared to C#, F# or Rust. No one would've batted an eye if either of those was used.

Re: A 10x Faster TypeScript

#155

Post by fabian2k »

dagw wrote: post #137
ramon156 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So wild that most of these points were something C# was supposed to be good at, and they all boil down to "its just not as good in C# as in Go"

Yea, sounds like cross platform AOT compiled C# not being mature and performant was a big reason that C# was rejected. One other thing I forgot to mention was that he talked about how the current compiler was mostly written as more or less pure functions operating on data structures, as opposed to being object oriented, and that this fits very well with the Go way of doing things, making 1:1 port much easier.

Immaturity of native AOT sounds like a likely culprit here. If they're after very fast startup times running classic C# is out. And native AOT is still pretty new.

You can write pure functions operating on data structures in C#, it's maybe not as idiomatic as in Go, but it should not cause problems.

Re: A 10x Faster TypeScript

#156

Post by rob74 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #144
pjmlp wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not AOT compiled C#, given the team's historical background?

I'm not involved in the decisions, but don't C# applications have a higher startup time and memory usage? These are important considerations for a compiler like this that needs to start up and run fast in e.g. new CI/CD boxes. For a daemon like an LSP I reckon C# would've worked.

Yes, in fact that's one of the main reasons given in the two linked interviews: Go can generate "real" native executables for all the platforms they want to support. One of the other reasons is (paraphrasing) that it's easier to port the existing mostly functional JS code to Go than to C#, which has a much more OOP style.

Re: A 10x Faster TypeScript

#157

Post by dmix »

dimgl wrote: post #138

I'm really surprised by this visceral reaction to not choosing Rust. Go is a great language and I'd choose it for a majority of projects over Rust just based off of the simplicity of the language and the ability to spin up developers on it quickly. Microsoft is a big corporation. Why _not_ use Go?

Do we need to have these conversations weekly?

Re: A 10x Faster TypeScript

#158

Post by Cthulhu_ »

Delomomonl wrote: post #139

I don't get it. Why is typescript not already a standard natively supported by browers?!

It kinda is already; strip type information and you've got valid JS. NodeJS supports running Typescript nowadays with the exception of some uneraseable syntax that is being discouraged, I'm sure it's only a matter of time before that bubbles up to V8 and other browser JS engines.

Re: A 10x Faster TypeScript

#159

Post by [deleted] »

rat9988 wrote: post #112
dimgl wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C# needs an interpreter (.NET runtime) while Go compiles down to a binary. And the toolchain allows you to compile for other architectures fairly easily. So that could be a fundamental reason why.

The grand parent was talking about AOT.

[deleted]

Re: A 10x Faster TypeScript

#160

Post by fixprix »

electroly wrote: post #143
DanRosenwasser wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We did anticipate this question, and we have actually written up an FAQ entry on our GitHub Discussions. I'll post the response below. https://github.com/microsoft/typescript-go/discussions/411 . ____ Language choice is always a hot topic! We extensively evaluated many language options, both recently and in prior investigations. We also considered hybrid approaches where certain components could be written in a nativ…

This is a great response but this is "why is Go better than JavaScript?" whereas my question is "why is Go better than C# , given that C# was famously created by the guy writing the blog post and Go is a language from a competitor?" C# and TypeScript are Hejlsberg's children; C# is such an obvious pick that there must have been a monster problem with it that they didn't think could ever be fixed. C# has all that stuf…

Anders answers that question here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10qowKUW82U&t=1154s

Transcript: "But I will say that I think Go definitely is much more low-level. I'd say it's the lowest level language we can get to and still have automatic garbage collection. It's the most native-first language we can get to and still have automatic GC. In contrast, C# is sort of bytecode-first, if you will. There are some ahead-of-time compilation options available, but they're not on all platforms and don't really have a decade or more of hardening. They weren't engineered that way to begin with. I think Go also has a little more expressiveness when it comes to data structure layout, inline structs, and so forth."

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