I've poked around in the TypeScript codebase just a little bit, and it's clear they've squeezed as much performance out of JS as they can (though really, you can tell that just by using the thing; it's impressively fast even though it's still "slow"). It's funny to see stuff like bit-flags in a JavaScript codebase
I am a little surprised nobody at Microsoft has started working on an official native compiler (or maybe they have, and we just don't know about it yet). It does feel like they've hit a ceiling
The core metric for TypeScript's success was to be able to put an IDE in a browser able to run and compile TypeScript itself, which is what the TypeScript team did with the Monaco (and Visual Studio Code) editor in 2011.
Monaco is just the GUI, it doesn't require language support (and in fact, the LSP that was pioneered alongside it means you don't even have to run the language support on the same machine, much less in the same codebase)
Again- any references for this claim? Genuinely curious if this is part of TypeScript's known history, or if it's just speculation
I am a little surprised nobody at Microsoft has started working on an official native compiler (or maybe they have, and we just don't know about it yet). It does feel like they've hit a ceiling