4 ms·

IMO tree-shaking and similar stuff must be not an afterthought, but instead built into language and tooling from the day one.

fransje26 3y ago
Do you happen to know languages that implement that? I vaguely remember remember some Zig post on the topic, but I don't remember if it was an idea exploration, or an implemented feature.
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  I can't name any language that was born with it. Most have it on the standard tools, but I don't think any language was born with it.
- rootext 3y ago
  Dart compiler does it, as I know.
kyrra 3y ago
One nice thing about go is that it ships with an AST package for parsing go code. It allows building of tooling really easily. https://pkg.go.dev/go/ast https://pkg.go.dev/go/ast
icholy 3y ago
Seems like you're conflating two separate things here. The Go compiler has a DCE pass which prevents unused code from ending up in the binary. The linked blog-post describes a tool for identifying unused code in your codebase. Two completely separate use-cases.
- BoppreH 3y ago
  I agree that "changes the generated binary" and "displays information to the user" are separate use cases, but the compiler already does both. There's even a compiler error for unused imports and variables. Doesn't seem far-fetched to ask for the compiler to warn on unused types/functions too.
  - icholy 3y ago
    It's not that simple. The Go compiler uses a main package as its entry point when compiling a binary. A module can have a many main packages each using different subsets of the library packages. So there are two choices here: 1. The Go compiler complains about code which is unused by the current main package. 2. The Go compiler tries to find/compile all main packages every-time. Both of these options suck.
mschuster91 3y ago
And then, people start using reflection (Java), vtables/dynamic lookups (C, C++), eval (JS, PHP) and similar constructs (a lot of languages have them), and suddenly tree-shaking falls apart. Tree shaking shouldn't be necessary in 2024 anyway.
- icholy 3y ago
  Calling vtables "reflection" is a stretch.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    I was merely listing stuff that can break or severely restrict tree-shaking.
    - icholy 3y ago
      Apologies, I misread your comment. But can you elaborate on your statement that tree-shaking (more commonly referred to as dead-code-elimination) is no longer required?
      - mschuster91 3y ago
        Tree shaking was mostly a thing invented in the NodeJS ecosystem for websites to save transfer traffic and thus lead to faster page loads, as well as save a bit of RAM. Even budget phones routinely have more than 4GB of RAM, and high-speed Internet access is the norm, so you can get away with a lot more inefficiency than just a few years ago.

fransje26 3y ago

Do you happen to know languages that implement that? I vaguely remember remember some Zig post on the topic, but I don't remember if it was an idea exploration, or an implemented feature.

marcosdumay 3y ago
I can't name any language that was born with it. Most have it on the standard tools, but I don't think any language was born with it.
rootext 3y ago
Dart compiler does it, as I know.

kyrra 3y ago

One nice thing about go is that it ships with an AST package for parsing go code. It allows building of tooling really easily. https://pkg.go.dev/go/ast https://pkg.go.dev/go/ast

icholy 3y ago

Seems like you're conflating two separate things here. The Go compiler has a DCE pass which prevents unused code from ending up in the binary. The linked blog-post describes a tool for identifying unused code in your codebase. Two completely separate use-cases.

BoppreH 3y ago
I agree that "changes the generated binary" and "displays information to the user" are separate use cases, but the compiler already does both. There's even a compiler error for unused imports and variables. Doesn't seem far-fetched to ask for the compiler to warn on unused types/functions too.
- icholy 3y ago
  It's not that simple. The Go compiler uses a main package as its entry point when compiling a binary. A module can have a many main packages each using different subsets of the library packages. So there are two choices here: 1. The Go compiler complains about code which is unused by the current main package. 2. The Go compiler tries to find/compile all main packages every-time. Both of these options suck.

mschuster91 3y ago

And then, people start using reflection (Java), vtables/dynamic lookups (C, C++), eval (JS, PHP) and similar constructs (a lot of languages have them), and suddenly tree-shaking falls apart. Tree shaking shouldn't be necessary in 2024 anyway.

icholy 3y ago
Calling vtables "reflection" is a stretch.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  I was merely listing stuff that can break or severely restrict tree-shaking.
  - icholy 3y ago
    Apologies, I misread your comment. But can you elaborate on your statement that tree-shaking (more commonly referred to as dead-code-elimination) is no longer required?
    - mschuster91 3y ago
      Tree shaking was mostly a thing invented in the NodeJS ecosystem for websites to save transfer traffic and thus lead to faster page loads, as well as save a bit of RAM. Even budget phones routinely have more than 4GB of RAM, and high-speed Internet access is the norm, so you can get away with a lot more inefficiency than just a few years ago.