Alex and Chris hop on the show to talk about a bit of technology that Alex calls “The 2nd best technological choice he’s ever made.” That technology is called Tree-sitter. It’s a code parsing tool for building ASTs (Abstract Syntax Trees) out of code. GitHub uses it to power search and “go to” functionality. The creators now work on Zen, where a code parser is paramount. We use it to understand an entire Pen very quickly so we can understand how it all links together (among other things) and make a plan for how to process the Pen (a “build plan”). It’s fast, accurate, forgiving, and extensible. Just a heck of a learning curve.
Jump Links
- 00:07 CodePen 2.0 is more than just a fresh coat of paint
- 03:00 Treesitter explained
- 12:04 Making the right choices with technology
- 21:50 How we parse your code
- 26:10 We don’t want you to have to be in config hell
- 28:48 Type type type stop see what happens
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