[yebyen]

There is a whole gulf of room between "we are the incumbent and there is no viable alternative in any language for JavaScript developers" and "the Rust folks have done it, there's an alternative now and it seems quite viable"

I think it's about escaping local minima? You can always look at the biggest sink for performance and say "there's definitely something we can do better in there" but unless you have something objectively better to compare it to, you'd never be sure.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. And knowing that of the hard problems you solved, someone else can solve them and in a different language, I think there's quite a bit of value to be obtained just through the competitive process that emerges when there is competition.

You can't fully have competitiveness without an actual alternative to compare yourself against. If the Rust folks can do the problem slightly faster by shaving off just 5% or less of the test suite, what all does that tell us about the theoretical limits of a solution when compared against the canonical version?

I have only limited understanding of the problem space, but I think there's always something intangible to be gained from having a quite similar implementation in a different language.

[mlhpdx]

> I think it's about escaping local minima?

Yes. It’s also been said (not often enough) “if we don’t compete with ourselves someone else will”. Getting out of one’s own head (and repo) is gold. It shows humility and respect as well as creates innovation and resilience.