The dangers of premature optimization are well understood among software engineers who’ve been frustrated when the secondary effects of the efforts end up compounding maintenance cost. (Does this principle play out in other milieu?). What’s perhaps more interesting to ponder is when “advanced optimizations” are decidedly beneficial but cannot be implemented because of larger system and social dynamics that require greater interop. Here I’m thinking with Dan Vanderkam’s post from back in Sept The Saga of the Closure Compiler, and Why TypeScript Won.
Dan skips gingerly back through recent web/computing history to discuss the (obvious in 20/20) demise of Google’s Closure compiler. The hardware of the early aughts demanded Closure’s designers focus on minification. In contrast, if the typed project(s) (TypeScript) of today are going to succeed beyond niche usage, they must play well with an expansive ecosystem of <other people’s code (le sigh!) which might not be typed. Despite the heroic campaigns of developers to slap types on their everythings (DefinitelyTyped), the JavaScript universe offers no gaurantees to makes of tools. TypeScripts declared horizon of
Be a cross-platform development tool
must be joined by
Emit clean, idiomatic, recognizable JavaScript code
and further qualified by the non-goal of
Aggressively optimize the runtime performance of programs. Instead, emit idiomatic JavaScript code that plays well with the performance characteristics of runtime platforms.
I wonder how many TypeScript developers have looked at the TypeScript Design Goals? Not to call out/in, just curious.
I wonder, the Midnight’s 2016 Endless Summer. Saxophone crying out from the other room.