Tokenmaxxing 📈, history of Google IDEs 🏛, dev invention mistakes 🙅

Q: Wasp's co-founder spent 5 years and $5M building a custom programming language for web dev and concl

Wasp's co-founder spent 5 years and $5M building a custom programming language for web dev and concluded it was a mistake, now pivoting to a TypeScript-based SDK.

Q: QuestDB achieved up to 25x performance gains on WINDOW JOIN queries using SIMD-vectorized aggregatio

QuestDB achieved up to 25x performance gains on WINDOW JOIN queries using SIMD-vectorized aggregation and data-level parallelism.

Q: Malware group TeamPCP open-sourced its Shai-Hulud credential-stealing worm on GitHub under the MIT L

Malware group TeamPCP open-sourced its Shai-Hulud credential-stealing worm on GitHub under the MIT License, with multiple forks already appearing.

TLDR·Thursday, May 14, 2026·5 min read

Engineering AI/ML Technology

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AI Summary

This TLDR Dev issue covers engineering incentive misalignment around AI token metrics, QuestDB's 25x WINDOW JOIN performance improvement via SIMD vectorization, and Wasp's co-founder admitting that building a custom programming language for web dev was a costly mistake. Additional coverage includes Google's IDE evolution to Cider V, open-source tools like Codebuff and React Doctor, and a malware group open-sourcing credential-stealing code on GitHub.

Key Facts

✓Wasp's co-founder spent 5 years and $5M building a custom programming language for web dev and concluded it was a mistake, now pivoting to a TypeScript-based SDK.

✓QuestDB achieved up to 25x performance gains on WINDOW JOIN queries using SIMD-vectorized aggregation and data-level parallelism.

✓Malware group TeamPCP open-sourced its Shai-Hulud credential-stealing worm on GitHub under the MIT License, with multiple forks already appearing.

Author Takes

BearishTLDR Dev

AI token usage as a performance metric

Using AI token usage or project complexity as performance metrics creates perverse incentives that reward visible activity over actual productivity, mirroring Goodhart's Law and the Cobra Effect.

BullishTLDR Dev

Future of software interfaces

The Emacsification of software via AI agents will shift the future toward highly configurable, bespoke personal tools rather than generic one-size-fits-all applications.

BearishTLDR Dev

Building a custom programming language for web dev

Creating a custom programming language for web development was a mistake due to high developer adoption friction and the prohibitive cost of maintaining custom IDE tooling.

BearishTLDR Dev

GitHub under Microsoft

Microsoft's AI-driven direction, lack of independent leadership, and US jurisdictional data risks make GitHub an untrustworthy platform, prompting migration to self-hosted Forgejo.

Contrarian Angle

Building a Custom Programming Language Was a $5M Mistake

Wasp's co-founder reflects that creating a proprietary language for web development caused massive developer adoption friction and high IDE maintenance costs, leading to a pivot back to TypeScript.

Counter to the 'build your own language' narrative — after 5 years and $5M, the lesson is that ecosystem compatibility trumps technical elegance for developer tool adoption.

TypeScript SDK replacing Wasp custom programming language

Wasp is transitioning from its custom programming language to a TypeScript-based SDK after 5 years and $5M, citing developer adoption friction and high IDE tooling maintenance costs.

Engineers switching from Wasp custom programming language to TypeScript SDK

Forgejo (self-hosted) replacing GitHub

A developer migrated from GitHub to a self-hosted Forgejo instance due to Microsoft's AI direction, lack of independent leadership, and US jurisdictional data risks.

Engineers switching from GitHub to Forgejo (self-hosted)

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