The QuickJS thing doesn't seem like a big deal to me, provided the documentation makes it clear that code will run slower if you use Any.
If I was using this project for something I'd expect to write custom TypeScript for it.
The floats rather than integers thing does look bad though. I tried compiling their fibonacci example to C (--backend c) and got this:
static double sc_f_fib(double sc_l_n_0) { /* /private/tmp/fib.ts:1 */
double sc_t0 = sc_l_n_0;
double sc_t1 = 2.0;
bool sc_t2 = sc_t0 < sc_t1;
double sc_t3;
if (sc_t2) {
double sc_t4 = sc_l_n_0;
sc_t3 = sc_t4;
} else {
double sc_t5 = sc_l_n_0;
double sc_t6 = 1.0;
double sc_t7 = sc_t5 - sc_t6;
double sc_t8 = sc_f_fib(sc_t7);
double sc_t9 = sc_l_n_0;
double sc_t10 = 2.0;
double sc_t11 = sc_t9 - sc_t10;
double sc_t12 = sc_f_fib(sc_t11);
double sc_t13 = sc_t8 + sc_t12;
sc_t3 = sc_t13;
}
return sc_t3; /* /private/tmp/fib.ts:2 */
}
If you’re writing Typescript with zero dependencies and trying to target native I feel like it makes more sense to write it in a different language like Rust or Go. The main reason for this I think is getting cheap perf wins by running existing code natively.
For some new custom small thing you'd be better off using not this though, right?
Personally i can kind of see a use case here. I've shipped some simple server side packages as a "compiled" Node single executable written in TS, but you're stuck with the big overhead of Node.
I've just been teaching myself Go, also a single binary but without the overhead. But in Go i miss the expressiveness of the TS type system sometimes.