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Moving from TypeScript to Rust / WebAssembly

nicolodavis.com

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Re: Moving from TypeScript to Rust / WebAssembly

#221

Post by blargmaster33 »

blub wrote: post #84
aphextron wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This really nails why languages like PHP and Ruby have won out over static typed, compiled ones for application level web development. The web is a massive collection of disjointed, loosely coupled APIs that all (just barely) interoperate to provide a massive array of functionality. Languages that tend to work well with it are those that are highly flexible around the corner cases of these technologies, and allow you…

They've "won" so far because static types languages were cumbersome and unpleasant to use, but this is changing and dynamic languages are learning some type tricks too. The issue here is with Rust: its strengths are mostly irrelevant for the web and its weaknesses (particularly slow development compared to the competition because of having to pacify the type checker) are really important. Op is painstakingly beating…

"static types languages were cumbersome and unpleasant to use"

Can not disagree more! Dynamic languages are by there verry nature inferior to statically typed.

Re: Moving from TypeScript to Rust / WebAssembly

#222

Post by qq717719152 »

csomar wrote: post #188
hardwaregeek wrote: post #29

Whenever I write Rust, I have a lot of fun, but I'm still not sold on it for most web dev. The analogy that comes to mind is that Rust is a really nice sports car with a great engine. It handles like a dream and you can feel the powerful engine humming while driving it. With the right open road, it's a great time. You can really optimize code, make great abstractions and work with data easily. Unfortunately, web dev…

It's still a significant upgrade over JavaScript. I'm developing a web app with the Backend in Rust and Front-end in Vuejs/JavaScript. Sure Rust was slower to develop, but it doesn't throw errors like 'val in undefined' and then I have to go debugging where I check for the value of val. You do that beforehand on Rust and that avoid a whole class of problems. JavaScript is cheaper to get started but becomes way more e…

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Re: Moving from TypeScript to Rust / WebAssembly

#223

Post by niuwenyan »

nicolodavis wrote: post #122
qaq wrote: post #120

I like Rust but I would much rather use Swift for something like that especially if SwiftUI like thing was part of the deal.

Note that Rust is only used for the state updates. All the UI stuff is TypeScript (using Svelte).

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Re: Moving from TypeScript to Rust / WebAssembly

#224

Post by jfkebwjsbx »

chjj wrote: post #179
jfkebwjsbx wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> maybe 2-3x the speed of the equivalent javascript code. That is an insane difference even if nowhere close to native code. Some engineering fields would be crazy with a 20% gain... 200% is huge!

I agree it still is signficant, but this is not how wasm is being touted. Look at wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebAssembly#History They even say asm.js is supposed to be "near-native code execution speeds". In my experience, it is no where close to native speed. People should avoid this kind of deceptive marketing.

On that front, I agree. Wasm is being sold as the greatest innovation ever, when it is just another virtual ISA with lacking features and performance.

Re: Moving from TypeScript to Rust / WebAssembly

#225

Post by wwright »

rubber_duck wrote: post #175
aphextron wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This really nails why languages like PHP and Ruby have won out over static typed, compiled ones for application level web development. The web is a massive collection of disjointed, loosely coupled APIs that all (just barely) interoperate to provide a massive array of functionality. Languages that tend to work well with it are those that are highly flexible around the corner cases of these technologies, and allow you…

Won ? Ruby fell off a cliff once it got to a point where people had to maintain that shit in production - I'm currently working on a large mature RoR codebase and I'm switching jobs ASAP because it's incredibly painful to work with and feels like a dead end career wise - and I like the gig otherwise - good product and a decent team - but the technology is draining so much of my life energy on nonsense it's ridiculous…

I say this a lot, but if you are this irritated by Rails, then you ought to see the 20+ year old legacy C/C++ some of us get to work with ;)

Re: Moving from TypeScript to Rust / WebAssembly

#226

Post by beaker52 »

loxs wrote: post #105

I will only nitpick on the part about TypeScript not being type-safe enough, where extra fields are possible or wrong types can be sent over the wire. io-ts [0] completely solves this issue, to the point where I don't think it's less type-safe than Rust in any practical manner. I've been writing apps in TS this way for the past year and I have quite a large codebase in production. The errors you mention do not happen…

I love things like this, but at the same time when I look at the API this library provides, it's not junior-friendly.

Even though I acknowledge it solves some problems I'd like to solve, if I put code using this library infront of a junior developer, they'd be paralaysed, and at best, if they weren't, write code with it that another junior wouldn't understand. That makes it difficult for me to justify introducing it.

Re: Moving from TypeScript to Rust / WebAssembly

#227

Post by te_chris »

cageface wrote: post #89
blub wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've "won" so far because static types languages were cumbersome and unpleasant to use, but this is changing and dynamic languages are learning some type tricks too. The issue here is with Rust: its strengths are mostly irrelevant for the web and its weaknesses (particularly slow development compared to the competition because of having to pacify the type checker) are really important. Op is painstakingly beating…

Exactly. The frameworks aren't there yet but I think Typescript is pretty much ideal for web dev. We're still using dynamic languages for web dev for mostly legacy reasons now.

It's still a single threaded run time. There's one platform that's ideal for web, BEAM, but unfortunately it doesn't have a strongly typed language. Elixir and Erlang are both great languages though.

Re: Moving from TypeScript to Rust / WebAssembly

#229

Post by spion »

nicolodavis wrote: post #99
amitport wrote: post #98

Hi Nicolo, Here are my two (or more) cents: 1 - Javascript is fast enough for your use case. No one will notice the difference in a board game website. 2 - AI should probably be implemented in python anyway. As ugly as python can be, you shouldn't fight the world; there are too many free advanced AI algo implementations in python out there. 3 - Regarding "Limitations of TypeScript" (strict typing / data validation /…

Hey Amit, good to hear from you! > Javascript is fast enough for your use case. No one will notice the difference in a board game website. No, actually. Have you seen how long boardgame.io's MCTS bot takes to make a Tic-Tac-Toe move? Not the end of the world, but certainly in need of improvement.

For a lot of code, if you write JS like you write C (avoid allocations by avoiding the creation of objects, arrays or closures) you should get very comparable performance i.e. within 30% to 50% of C performance

Re: Moving from TypeScript to Rust / WebAssembly

#230

Post by wffurr »

chjj wrote: post #65
pjmlp wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome already has experimental support for SIMD, have you tried that as well? Otherwise, eventually I expect WebAssembly to match what Flash Crossfire and PNaCL were capable of 10 years ago.

No, but I've been meaning to test this. I did notice it was available in node.js with --experimental-wasm-simd. I hope this proves me wrong about wasm, but I'll have to try it.

Note that Emscripten has an implementation of C++ intrinsics based on wasm simd: https://emscripten.org/docs/porting/simd.html
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