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  • Despite the hate it is receiving, I thought lets test it at least, and tried it to any project that I have locally. For every single of them the coverage generates hundreds of errors and so it is basically useless. I get that I can write a project from scratch, don't use any third party library, and it'll compile to binary, but then why should I not use Rust, Go, Zig, D, C, V, Ada, C++, Nim, Swift, Kotlin Native, Haskell... literally anything designed to be compiled and compiled well?
    by pmkary
  • A lot of people are trying this now with AI, a native TypeScript compiler, for example https://github.com/PerryTS/pry. It's a compelling value proposition, TypeScript is already well typed and barring a few cases it can be turned into machine code without a JS runtime.
    by satvikpendem
  • It's nice they acknowledge and confirm the need for small, fast native executables.

    Having followed the story for this in Java over the decades I'm skeptical about the practicality. GCJ existed in the 90s and the technology was good, but there was no ecosystem support.

    After many small steps between GraalVM Native finally tackled the problem more holistically and the ecosystem followed. All the major libraries and frameworks put effort into being GraalVM compatible.

    And, still it's a major pain to make even simple existing applications run flawlessly natively.

    I'm glad something like scriptc exists but I'm afraid until this is of practical use it will be s long thorny way.

    by weinzierl
  • Vercel doing Vercel: 5 days old, entirely vibecoded, already 1.5k stars for no reason, solves no one's issue and will stop being maintained in a few months (if more than this week).
    by h1fra
  • this is enough to keep them on the first page of HN and similar services. Its a growth strategy: invest tokens, build some "nice" project nobody wants, get some reach through publishment. Rinse and repeat.

    Heads up, in 12 months from now, 90% of open source projects will be vibecoded, without actual users - only looking "interesting" (if not already?).

    Its easy to vibe code a full blown compiler these days, the question is: will it be maintained? A catchy title is not enough to get sticky users, long term maintenance, community around the project is (or at least used to be).

    Having said that, the only viable reason for these kind of projects I see is getting attention for a moment, boosting reach of Vercel logo across the web and then disappearing (or stop development).

    If Vercel would think seriously about this project: they would show skin in the game - for example implement it as their own experimental runtime.

    by piterrro
  • One of the strengths of TypeScript besides its expressiveness is that it's compatible with the massive npm ecosystem. Most packages only ship untyped JavaScript with type declarations defining the interface,[0] so realistically you'd still need a JavaScript engine if you use any packages.

    But if you're starting from scratch and know you won't be using any npm packages, you might as well use AssemblyScript.[2]

    [0]: Publishing packages in TypeScript is explicitly discouraged by Node[1]. TypeScript isn't backwards compatible even in minor releases, and its compiler settings aren't portable for packages.

    [1]: https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/main/doc/api/typescript....

    [2]: https://www.assemblyscript.org/

    by sheept
  • Porforr<https://porffor.dev> has been working towards the same goal for a while. The creator, CanadaHonk<https://honk.foo>, is extremely talented and the project still only passes ~68% of Test262. I'm more than a little suspicious of how Vercel has made so much progress so fast, unless I'm misunderstanding the scope of this project.
    by acmnrs
  • Vercel sloping it's way to clout again, they do this every month or so, clearly they want to stay in the news and some how credible and relevant.

    I can't think of any serious company or project that would use this thing.

    P.S: I just checked the contributors list, I have the utmost respect to them (notably simonw), but clearly this code is claude'ish but it is not among the contributor which makes it even more suspect.

    by JoeDohn

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