On: Port of the TypeScript compiler, checker and lsp to Rust, by LLM

[jitl]

Rust memory management is very different from GC heap memory management.

[e12e → jitl]

Are you saying typescript idioms are significantly different from rust idioms (for a parser/grammar implementation) due to memory management?

The "shape" of the code would be different?

[vrighter → e12e]

pretty much most nontrivial programs need to have a different shape to fit into the rust mindset.

For example i wrote a digital logic simulator. The last step involved a linking step to turn all indexes into pointers, once the component graph is generated in full and becomes stable in memory. The simulator just chased pointers.

In rust all of that would have either had to keep using indices, be highly non idiomatic by boxing everything (and slower), or implemented in unsafe rust.

If I have to write a lot of unsafe rust, then i would actually switch to cpp because unsafe c++ is easier to get right than unsafe rust

[jitl → e12e]

they wanted to do a direct line by line port. they evaluated rust and picked go because the gc let them keep code structure.

[pjmlp → jitl]

While true, it has not prevented other Microsoft teams to port Typescript, and .NET code into Rust.

Notorious examples, the recent Github Copilot runtime, and the Microsoft 365 microservices.