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Comment by dimitropoulos | Hacker News Reader

look, not to argue with a stranger on hacker news, lol, but genuine calm question here: is this really a helpful nit? I know what you're getting at but the blogpost itself doesn't imply that JavaScript is 10x faster. I could complain, about your suggested change, that it's really `build and typecheck` time. It's a title. Sometimes they don't have _all_ the context. That's ok.

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It is for me. If someone says TypeScript is faster than X, they rarely mean the build time. I understand other people's points about TypeScript not being a runtime at all and only being a compiler, but when casually saying "TypeScript is faster than say ruby", people do not mean the compiler.

well, thanks for explaining. we might just simply disagree here. when I hear "TypeScript" I think of TypeScript, and when I hear "JavaScript" I think of JavaScript. I know what you mean re: casually speaking, but this is a blogpost from the TypeScript team. That context is there, too. I think if the same title were from an AWS release note, I'd totally see what you mean.

Typescript is JavaScript at runtime. It’s not a separate language, just like Python with type annotations (TypePython?) is just Python at runtime. Both are just type annotations that get stripped away before anything tries to run the code. That’s the genius of the idea and why it’s so easily adopted.

It is quite literally a separate language. Python's type hints are a part of the Python specification and all valid Python type hints will run in any compliant Python runtime. Typescript is not, in any way, valid JavaScript. The moment you add any type syntax, you can no longer run the code in Node or Browsers without enabling a special preprocess step.

Do you think JSX is a separate language?

Yes, JSX is a superset of JS and will not work in any tooling that is not explicitly JSX compatible. JS grammars will not parse it, it's not standard.

But no one actually says "TypeScript is faster than say ruby". They probably say "node is faster than say ruby" or maybe "bun is faster than say ruby". Perhaps they say "JavaScript is faster than say ruby", although even that is underspecified.

Then read the article? I don't get it - Typescript, to anyone familiar, is not a language runtime. It does not optimize. It is a transpiler. If you don't even know this much about Typescript, you aren't the audience and lack prerequisite knowledge. Go read anything on the topic.

If someone posted an article talking about the "handedness" of DNA or something, I wouldn't complain "oh, you confused me, I thought you were saying DNA has hands!"

misleading titles are a no-no on HN.

I agree with pseudopersonal in that the title should be changed. technically it's not misleading, but not everyone uses or is familiar with typescript.

It could have been a new TSC that compiles to WASM.

Unfortunately many people only look at headlines, so titles do matter. People take them at face value.

yes, and TypeScript is not JavaScript. Objectively, every element of _TypeScript_, strictly speaking, is well known to be separate.

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