Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by oblio 2310 days ago
In the Java world 99% of the code is compiled with javac.

In the .NET world 99% of the code is compiled with csc (or whatever it's called, don't remember that well)

In the C world, with one of the biggest ecosystems and a fragmented history going back half a century, 99% of the code is compiled with GCC/Clang/VS CL (of which VS CL is there just because Microsoft insists on it being there).

Similar things happen with interpreters, CPython, Yarv, etc.

Javascript should innovate at higher levels. And it should have a linker and tree shaking compiler as default for every project, everywhere, so that people can stop making silly small libs and instead can use big ones that get compiled to small code bits that are distributed by websites.

2 comments

> Javascript should innovate at higher levels

Until that level takes the problem of in-browser, persistent file/blob storage seriously, the JS ecosystem will not be able to truly progress, particularly when it comes to the question of linking evolving code bases with more stable libraries. But I digress. (I'm not going to "pimp" for my project now... see my comments!)

Having a good sensible default is one thing, bundling everything together is another. If I prefer jest over the test suite provided by Rome, I would have to install two test suites in the same project. Why not split them into different packages and let user pick what they want?