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I'd have to be pretty carefully persuaded that someone who wrote infrastructure tools in JS makes decent design decisions.
by kristopolous 3y ago
I'd have to be pretty carefully persuaded that someone who wrote infrastructure tools in JS makes decent design decisions.
- tukantje 3y agoPeople use the tools they have. When you want to build an infrastructure tool, you won't (or shouldn't) start with "how to write rust". Getting to the finish line matters more than using the absolute best fit so to speak. Same goes for orgs that have a lot of JS talent but no Rust for example.
- kristopolous 3y agoIt's not an advocacy for rust but a fairly introductory level shell script would likely be a very sophisticated JavaScript program. I've seen such efforts and they tend to be extremely complicated and not really doing much. I don't assume rational agency but instead that many people make poor decisions.
- everforward 3y agoIf they add Typescript and primarily stick to wrappers around C libraries and calling out to other binaries it could be okay. The core language is okay enough, not my favorite but it works. It's the surrounding ecosystem that's a pain. I would have to think really hard if someone asked me if I'd rather have all the infra scripts written in Perl or TS. TS is more likely to break, but easier to read and fix. The odds of Perl breaking are slim, but it is a fucking nightmare to fix. I'm pretty sure I'd rather have Perl than JS, though. JS without a type system is rough, to me at least.