> This is an experimental, work-in-progress port of React Compiler to Rust. ...
And then gets merged.
So after the craziness to use node on the backend, we are back to using compiled languages to compile Javascript assets and Web resources, just like Java and .NET were doing in the 2000's, however since it is Go and Rust it is cool, not the boring languages grandpas were using on their heyday.
I'm not sad to see the pendulum swing away from "javascript everywhere" though.
Likewise, .NET has had NGEN since day one even if with limitations, and after several detours in AOT approaches, NativeAOT is in the package and cross platform, thus also a moot point in 2026.
But again, they aren't cool for the kids today.
And yes, both languages are considered "not cool" since they lean heavily into code structuring that the industry has largely moved past.
AOT .NET is an official first party distribution target that in my experience is on par with building a Go binary
Don't knock it till you try it
I don't see what Python has to do with anything.
In fact both languages conveniently map to COM object model, and Microsoft is putting that to good effect.
Than we have Swift and Kotlin, plenty of OOP on those Apple and Google frameworks.
Zig, Odin, remain to be seen how industry relevant they will be, and yet examples of structs with function pointers abound among their projects, C OOP style.
So....
Usually only looked in high regard when the content supports the message, proudly ignored otherwise.
And I do still think there is an advantage for this kind of tooling to choose languages that are designed to compile to a native binary. At best Java and C# are equivalent to Go and Rust here, maybe they are less "cool" but I don't see any reason why this rewrite would be better if it were to Java than Rust.
> And then gets merged.
The initial commit attached to that message was the start of the experiment. Are you reading the first message as if it was the last?
It was merged after 3 months and a huge number of incremental commits. The code that was merged was completely different than the code used to open the experimental WIP PR
Why is it a criticism that they started as a work in progress experiment? That’s how experiments work. It’s normal to push code as a work in progress PR and then add to it over time.