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Comment by petersellers | Hacker News Reader

You have a hard time believing that their team experienced more happiness and productivity with TS...because your ReasonML code compiles a lot faster than your TS code?

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I've actually been (very) wary of adopting TypeScript once I learned of the multi-second compile times, even for tiny projects.

I had actually been watching Deno in case they solved any of that.

They become really frustrating as the project grows in size. Personally, it becomes really difficult to maintain productivity. As compile times tick up, I start bouncing over to other tabs rather than just twiddling my thumbs starring at a terminal. Then I realize I've been on Reddit for a half-hour.

I recently watched this talk by Johnathan Blow[0] where he talks about quality of life in programming languages and spends a fair amount of time talking about compile times and their effects.

I think we collectively need to re-align on being performance focused. Tools are simultaneously amazing but crummy at the same time.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZgbKrDEzAs&t=2s

I don't love the compile times, but I'll also say with TypeScript I tend to check the browser that often. TS also means simpler refactoring, for example.

Note also: * type checks can run in parallel, so they won't block your other build block * the tsc has been making gradual improvements to performance and techniques to improve compilation and type checking * there are speedy alternatives to the TypeScript compiler (tsc) (eg: https://sucrase.io) for transpilation

Much faster compiles times sounds like a good reason to me ;)

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