Scriptc by Vercel: TypeScript-to-Native compiler, no JavaScript engine in binary

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.

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/

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.

It's difficult to ignore how the README is filled with Claudisms.

> macOS arm64 is the primary platform; Linux and Windows binaries build by cross-compilation

wish it was the other way around

178kb?! What are you putting in there, a JVM?

how can you compile it if javascript is a valid subset of typescript? confused.

I like the idea.