All these languages du jour should go out of their way to answer the question: "why bother?". 10x faster than react. OK cool. Except unless it has something like react native it's irrelevant if you might want to write an app in future with any sort of code reuse since you'll be tied to the web (unless you want the inevitable world-of-pain of trying to integrate this preprocessor into your xcode/android builds...).
Because building something is fun and building a programming language is a lot of fun.
All these languages du jour should go out of their way to answer the question: "why bother?". 10x faster than react. OK cool. Except unless it has something like react native it's irrelevant if you might want to write an app in future with any sort of code reuse since you'll be tied to the web (unless you want the inevitable world-of-pain of trying to integrate this preprocessor into your xcode/android builds...).
These are devs who would rather build tools to build a web app than to build a web app. Different people have different itches. We don't have to consume what they produce. Just have to read about it on HN.
Well and fine, but those tools then need to be maintained forever, and they become yet another tool in the stack for developers who come on board to a company which has adopted them. It's easier and quicker to learn a new library like React, or even a new DSL like JSX, than a new language.
"People making programming languages are much better suited by targeting non-programmers: existing devs are often simply not their audience." In this case I'd argue it would be better for non-programmers to learn JavaScript before a language which compiles to it.
I get a little confused when people say they "compile" x scripting language into y scripting language.
Are you trying to be snarky or are you actually confused? Check out the wikipedia article on Transpilers for info on source to source compilers.
Yay! Another new programming language for hipsters! Another pointless technology to learn! For god sakes, use js &co, clojure, or elm. Nothing else is worth it.
You know your examples were/are considered new languages at one point, right?
Pretty sure they are still considered new or at least exotic from a "typical" developer's point of view.