We rewrote our Rust WASM parser in TypeScript and it got faster

Post by mohsen1 » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 4:18 PM UTC

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #187

mohsen1 wrote: post #183

When there is a solid test harness, AI Coding can do magic! It was able to beat XZ on its own game by a good margin: https://github.com/mohsen1/fesh

> I had no idea how any of this works. This is apparent. xz's own game is not "a specialized compression pre-processor for x86_64 ELF binaries.". xz's own game is a general-purpose compression utility suited for a range of tasks, not optimized for one ridiculously specific domain. Also, any compression benchmark really ought to include speed of de/compression, not only compression ratio, as compression algorithms occ…

Post by philipallstar » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 4:56 PM UTC

littlestymaar wrote: post #136

wiseowise wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but in the end it was deemed a waste of time when the whole project was terminated. The main lesson of the story. Just pick Python and move fast, kids. It doesn’t matter how fast your software is if nobody uses it.

And this is why pretty much all commercial software is terrible and runs slower than the equivalent 20 years ago despite incredible advance in hardware.

Post by ambicapter » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 5:45 PM UTC

rowanG077 wrote: post #85

kyralis wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is either an overly pedantic take or a disingenuous one. The very first line that the parent quoted is > uv is fast because of what it doesn’t do, not because of what language it’s written in. The fact that the language had a small effect ("a bit") does not invalidate the statement that algorithmic improvements are the reason for the relative speed. In fact, there's no reason to believe that rust without the alg…

I think we might be talking past each other a bit. The specific claim I was responding to was that all of uv’s performance improvements come from algorithms rather than the language. My point was just that this is a stronger claim than what the article supports, the article itself says Rust contributes “a bit” to the speed, so it’s not purely algorithmic. I do agree with the broader point that algorithmic and archite…

Post by Yanko_11 » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 6:01 PM UTC

Post by Someone » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 6:47 PM UTC

wiseowise wrote: post #113

ameixaseca wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is the exact opposite. This was particularly true for one of the projects I've worked with in the past, where Python was chosen as the main language for a monitoring service. In short, it proved itself to be a disaster: just the Python process collecting and parsing the metrics of all programs consumed 30-40% of the processing power of the lower end boxes. In the end, the project went ahead for a while…

> but in the end it was deemed a waste of time when the whole project was terminated. The main lesson of the story. Just pick Python and move fast, kids. It doesn’t matter how fast your software is if nobody uses it.