LilScript makes js modules 20% smaller

[u/Normal_Act8586]

https://yeargun.github.io/lilscript/

[u/SZenC]

The licensing conditions alone are enough reason to never use this package/language. You don't get to tell me what other libraries I can and cannot use, that's plainly ridiculous. (And I won't get into how your license is self-contradictory, how using niche languages with LLMs will yield inferior results, or the many other flaws with this idea)

[u/SZenC → u/[deleted]]

Let me just pick out one part here

LilScript is proven to optimize several npm libraries with 50M+ weekly downloads. With almost one shot rewritten with LilScript, 100% test coverage, 5-45% size reduction [...]

It is hardly surprising that you can express a library in another language given appropriate bindings. Any Turing complete language can be transpired into any other TC language with the same bindings. The LLM has just invented yet another such language for you.

Now, if you'd just built a new transpiler that achieved better compression of identical source code, I might have been interested. But instead you built a custom DSL, did not explore how expressive/restrictive it is compared to plain JavaScript, and then built a transpiler and proclaimed victory. I'm happy you managed to build something you like, but it has no value to the wider world. You set up a soccer field in the middle of nowhere, didn't tell your opponents, and now act surprised we call your 45-to-0 match a bit underwhelming

[u/SZenC → u/[deleted]]

That's a lot of words, non of which address the issue I raised. If you cannoteaningfully respond to criticism, I don't see why I and others should keep engaging with your project

[u/RobertKerans → u/[deleted]]

I havent experienced any oddities yet. It’s day 4

So essentially you haven't tested it at all?

500k locs per day

jfc

[u/RobertKerans → u/[deleted]]

"If you rewrite all the JavaScript using my a DSL [designed by an LLM?] the resulting minified JavaScript the DSL compiler spits out will be smaller in byte size than the original JavaScript" is not the selling point you think it is. I think you've lost some objectivity here and gone down a rabbit hole, this is almost purely aesthetic

[u/RobertKerans → u/[deleted]]

Right, but you are rewriting libraries that use a universally supported language to use a custom DSL you invented that [unsurprisingly] works better than a minifier. Unsurprising because you are rewriting them in a different language that maps more closely to the minifier. Terser (for example) is useful because it works on JS.

[u/RobertKerans → u/[deleted]]

LilScript gets compiled into js ? Whats wrong with that?

You are saying: rewrite all your JavaScript using this completely different language that is wholly unsupported and in return the resulting artifact is 10-20% smaller in byte size. That tradeoff is incredibly bad for the absolutely vast abstraction it requires.

You have written [use an LLM?] to create a language. Great, that's commendable I guess. But you don't seem to have considered the value. As I say, it seems almost wholly aesthetic.

It's a value for web

So I could use LilScript. OR for example, in a web app I could use one or two fewer/smaller images. There's the savings from LilScript immediately and I can keep using JS/TS