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Skeptical of rewriting JavaScript tools in "faster" languages

(nolanlawson.com)
160 points todsacerdoti | 1 comments | 20 Oct 24 21:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.203s | source
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jpalawaga ◴[20 Oct 24 21:53 UTC] No.41898791[source]▶
Anyone who has done a programming contest, advent of code, etc knows that the language doesn’t matter so much as your algorithm.

Yes, the language can bring a nice speed up, or might give you better control of allocations which can save a lot of time. But in many cases, simply picking the correct algorithm will deliver you most of the performance.

As someone who doesn’t JavaScript a lot, I’d definitely prefer a tool written in go and available on brew over something I need to invoke node and its environment for.

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1. hawski ◴[20 Oct 24 22:18 UTC] No.41898952[source]▶
In higher level languages your code may allocate memory or trigger a GC pass or other smartness in unexpected places. This may cause slowdowns you may not have control over or may change from version to version or vendor to vendor. It is often easier to manage in "faster" languages. Good algorithm may not be enough.