Absolutely not, no. At least not any more than LaTeX is a cloud based solution with monthly fees (Overleaf)

The language, ecosystem, and compiler are FOSS. There is a cloud editor / collaboration platform that is paid, but nothing about the language requires that you use it (I use it almost exclusively through emacs)

You can write Typst in any editor you like, and the Typst compiler is FOSS available.

I write Typst code from emacs personally

Some someone who learned document editing and drafting through LaTeX in my undergrad, I gotta say I'm not sure I'd recommend it anymore to people looking for a new tool.

To me, Typst is the 'weirdly missing' option here. I really see it as the most promising successor to LaTeX, which is not something I say lightly given that I spent years scoffing at the idea of Typst ever displacing LaTeX in my life.

> why not just compile a static but generic version of the method with branches based on the tags of values? ("Can't figure out the types, wait until runtime and then just branch to the specialized method instances which I do know the types for")

This is exactly what the new AOT compiler (juliac) does. The original article is just a bit inaccurate.

The problem though, is that if you have a truly dynamic call-site where you have no idea which method body will be called, then the AOT compiler can't know if the right method specializations will survive the trimming process, so you'll get errors or warnings when compiling with the --trim feature active (--trim is what is used to make the AOT compiled binaries small).

However, there are still lots of cases where you can have a dynamic dispatch but can convince the compiler that there will be an already compiled method signature for every possible specialization. In that case --trimm will work fine and do exactly what you described above.

Sorry if I was unclear, but what I was saying was that this would be unsustainable because the only way it'd be possible is if Valve was subsidizing each unit in hopes of recouping their losses on Steam game sales.

If that happened, Valve would get bankrupted by companies buying up subsidized Steam Machines with no intention of playing games on them.