608K views · Mar 11, 2025 · 13:45 · 2 HN recommenders · 5 mentions · discussed 2025
Anders Hejlsberg introduces the native port of the TypeScript compiler, written in Go, which promises roughly 10x faster tooling. He demos compiling VS Code and explains where the speedup comes from.
Why Hacker News points people here: Commenters cite it as the authoritative source for why the port is faster and why Go was chosen.
“The relationship of their performance gains to functional programming ideas is explained beginning at 8:14”HN comment, 2025
“The relationship of their performance gains to functional programming ideas is explained beginning at 8:14”
Explains performance gains via immutable data and parallelizable problems from 8:14.
The key: > immutable data structures --> "we are fully concurrent, because these are what I often call embarrassingly parallelizable problems" The relationship of their performance gains to functional programming ideas is explained beginning at 8:14 this video
“You can check his arguments here”
Hejlsberg's reasoning for choosing Go for the TypeScript compiler.
After hearing the explanation about why he picked Go for the Typescript compiler I can only be more of a fan of Anders Hejlsber. He said that Go was chosen due to its suitability for the workload, offering low-level control, optimized native code, automatic memory management, and concurrency. And this coming from the same guy that created C#, Typescript, Delphi & Turbo Pascal shows how a real engineer takes a decision of this magnitude. Is Go the best decision for every SW project? No, but in this case the arguments (and the tests they did during their evaluation) check out. And no, picking F# simply because you love the language is not a mature decision. You can check his arguments here: this video
“they show some of the code side by side and it is just a ton of if statements”
Shows code side by side with many if statements.
In the embedded video they show some of the code side by side and it is just a ton of if statements. this video
“the video linked in the post might answer your question?”
Demo compiling VS Code explains where the 10x figure comes from.
Not sure if it does but the video linked in the post might answer your question? I think he is compiling vscode which includes Monaco editor which is where they are getting 10x faster stat. (I might be wrong here.) [0] [0] this video
“Hejlsberg also says in this video, about 3.3x performance is from going native and the other 2-3x is by using multithreading.”
Hejlsberg breaks down speedup: native code versus multithreading.
Here's the FAQs, where they explain the decision to go with Go and not, say, rust. link Hejlsberg also says in this video, about 3.3x performance is from going native and the other 2-3x is by using multithreading. this video
