Re:How I'm Productive with Claude Code
by TheRoque on Tuesday March 24, 2026 @04:30AM
(#47499922)
Both links are the same, SWC in this context is probably Speedy Web Compiler. It transpiles really fast but doesn't do any type checks.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
> It transpiles really fast but doesn't do any type checks
What's the point of using it during development, then?
Transpilation is here a necessary step to test the application because e.g. his browser won't be able to parse raw TypeScript code.
Typechecking is not: the browser doesn't care about it, it's mainly to help the developer verify its code.
So to speed-up the build during development (to have faster iterations) the idea is often to make the building process only about the build by removing "unnecessary" steps like type-checking from it, while having a separate linting / typechecking etc. process, which could even run in parallel - but not be necessary to be able to test the application.
This is often done by using tools like a bundler (e.g. esbuild) or a transpiler (babel, swc) to erase the types without checking them in your bundling process.