Echo JS 0.11.0

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ben 3381 days ago. link 3 points ▲ ▼
Admittedly I haven't used it much, but it strikes me as a superset of JavaScript for C# developers and a slight rehash of JScript. This should be no surprise, as it is a Microsoft initiative and doubtless enables .net developers to achieve a higher level of full stack productivity.

While its compatibility with Visual Studio's debugger is excellent and it can in theory output highly performant JS, I have to say that, having myself approached C# only after JS, and having a better knowledge of JS than the former, I don't really see the point in writing typesafe code that's eventually transpiled for a non-typesafe interpreter.

Replies

lordhanson 3379 days ago. link 1 point ▲ ▼
While I'd agree its a natural stepping stone for c# devs that's not it's origins. Typescript is a superset of JavaScript and the roots of its optional static typing where laid down many years ago with ActionScrript and the abandoned ES4 spec.
coffeeyesplease 3380 days ago. link 1 point ▲ ▼
Thanks. You do make some valid points and would like to pick your brain a bit further :-)
a) What about organisation? Did you feel like it easier to work on a team and share code? 
b) Did you had any problems with the compiled code?
ben 3366 days ago. link 1 point ▲ ▼
Hello! So sorry I didn't write back. And thank you lordhanson - I didn't know that, but it makes perfect sense. To answer your question, coffee:

a) I did, yes, as statically typed code is much easier to reason about. TypeScript is naturally a little more verbose than plain JavaScript, but what it lacks in brevity it more than makes up for with clarity.

b) Nope, no problems; I use Browserify a lot so tsify was a natural choice of tooling for me. But there are many options available to support whatever you're using to compile modules.

I may well end up using TS exclusively going forward, especially due to the quality of code produced using TS + ES6. It's a Microsoft-backed project and seems it's around to stay, so my conclusion is that it's well worth taking it up if it piques your curiosity sufficiently after one or two tries.