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Klonoartoday at 8:21 PM1 replyview on HN

> Rewrite a bundler in Rust and you haven't only made it faster. You've also shrunk the pool of JavaScript developers who can maintain it. The new tool still looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, but it's a different beast altogether. Its internals retreat behind a black box that fewer people hold the keys to. The source may still be open, but the door to contributions is closing.

Alternatively, there's a pool of JS developers who shouldn't be maintaining critical infrastructure to begin with.

It's not a black box, those codebases are usually open and the only thing holding you or anyone back is learning anything outside of a small pond of JavaScript.

Write non-browser-things in fast languages. It is not a complicated concept - even less so in an era where stuff is getting written for you.


Replies

devilsdatatoday at 8:46 PM

Absolutely agree. If a JS developer doesn't know Rust, Go, Zig, or something, then they probably aren't going to do a good job at maintaining critical infrastructure, even if it were written in JS.

Why are people writing "critical" infrastructure in JS anyway, it is the wrong tool for the job.

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