Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

TypeScript: a language for application-scale JavaScript development

typescriptlang.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 316 posts

Re: TypeScript: a language for application-scale JavaScript development

#251

Post by esrauch »

aaronblohowiak wrote: post #125
eddieplan9 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you were referring to the JavaScript syntax when you said JavaScript is full of flaws, because IMHO the language itself - except the syntax component - is actually very good. Someone on Quora said[1] it very well: JavaScript is a wonderful language, deep down: It's Lisp-y, yet imperative. Its lack of support for threads has turned out to be a strength on the server side. And recent implementations have made i…

The language itself is broken, especially when it comes to equality, type coercion, `arguments`, and Date processing.

Equality (and that portion of type coercion) is pretty much solved by using === and the rest of type coercion is solved by only using + when both sides are numbers or strings. I don't see how that gets as much ire as it does

Re: TypeScript: a language for application-scale JavaScript development

#252

Post by colin_jack »

discreteevent wrote: post #213
colin_jack wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to admit I'm impressed with MS here. Contrast Dart and TS. Dart announced a year ago and they're only now dealing the JS interop issue, so to most people its still only really interesting as a play thing. TS announced and from the looks of if we choose to we can immediately start using it. I know Dart is more ambitious and maybe long term their focus on issues other than interop will be proved to be correct, b…

Google deliberately opened up dart development early. I thing that was a good thing. They could have kept it closed and released it today, it's roughly as mature as type script seems to be. Would you have been happier with that?

Opening it early was maybe fine, opening it early with no coherent interop strategy and then taking a year to put one together seems like it could have been a mistake.

Re: TypeScript: a language for application-scale JavaScript development

#253

Post by colin_jack »

munificent wrote: post #246
colin_jack wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to admit I'm impressed with MS here. Contrast Dart and TS. Dart announced a year ago and they're only now dealing the JS interop issue, so to most people its still only really interesting as a play thing. TS announced and from the looks of if we choose to we can immediately start using it. I know Dart is more ambitious and maybe long term their focus on issues other than interop will be proved to be correct, b…

Comparing JS interop in Dart and TypeScript is apples and oranges. Dart has a native virtual machine with its own garbage collector and object representation. The language itself has an entirely different object model and set of collection types. For better or worse, even Dart's number types are different from JS. Doing JS interop in Dart is like trying to do interop between the JVM and CLR. TypeScript doesn't have J…

Apples and oranges are both fruits though, so when I am thinking about how to get my five a day I think its reasonable to compare them.

I do understand what you are saying, had read similiar on Dart forum in past. Just to be dear I am not in any way saying I think the interop would have been easy, I do think without it Dart was a dead end for most people. It will be interesting to see how things proceed, whether the interop story that is now available lets Dart finally take off a bit in terms of usage and mindshare.

Re: TypeScript: a language for application-scale JavaScript development

#255

Post by DougWebb »

skrebbel wrote: post #144
DougWebb wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started doing C# development last year, coming from mostly a Unix/Perl platform, and I'm really glad about the timing because that's when Microsoft got serious about open development. I started doing web apps using ASP.NET MVC3, and this year MVC4 was released as an open-source project[1]. It seems that a bunch of 'young turks' have reached higher management positions in most of the key software development product…

Roughly the same story here. At the risk of sounding like a fanboy, I feel that while most tech BigCos (e.g. Google, Apple) have become more evil over time, MS has actually become less evil, to the point that using their tech (and some major tech at that) is relatively free of any lock-in risk. TypeScript seems very much in line with this trend, and I love it. This is exactly what I wanted - JavaScript but with decen…

I'm hardly a fanboy, I'm just lucky that MS' web stack became usable at the time I changed to a job where I needed to start using it. I don't think I could have transitioned from where I was to ASP.NET or the older stacks. I actually miss Apache/mod_perl which I found much simpler and more powerful, and I regret that I didn't get the chance to use Mojolicious professionally. But MVC3/4 haven't been so bad. I like the naming-convention-based approach because Rails and other frameworks use it, and I like having the ability to override it as-needed with attributes or route definitions. I like the dynamic type, given that I'm a die-hard Perl programmer, but I honestly haven't needed to use it in MVC so I'm not sure what you're referring too... maybe just the ViewBag object? I always used typed models for my views, and when I pass info through ViewBag I pull typed objects out of it at the top of my view so I have strongly typed variables in the rest of the view.

I don't think Microsoft tech has ever favored clarity...it's usually too java-esqe ivory-tower architeched enterprisey for my tastes. MVC is like that too, but the worst bits seem to be the ones inherited from ASP.NET. The new stuff is somewhat better, and you can now at least go look at the code to figure out how it works.

Re: TypeScript: a language for application-scale JavaScript development

#256

Post by ufo »

erichocean wrote: post #48
ovidiu wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we have not. Read John Carmack's posts on static code analysis to understand why.

I've been writing large-scale JS applications with SproutCore since 2007, and not once have I been bitten by a bug that would have been caught by static typing. Same with Objective-C and my iOS and Cocoa development (since the OpenStep days). I do use Scala on the server side though, and it helps there. But application development is, IMO, hindered by static typing. It's a lot more work to set up, and provides essent…

> I've been writing large-scale JS applications with SproutCore since 2007, and not once have I been bitten by a bug that would have been caught by static typing.

Common things such as access an undefined variable or property or trying to call a method of a null object would be detected by most static type checking algorithms.

Re: TypeScript: a language for application-scale JavaScript development

#257

Post by dj2stein9 »

untog wrote: post #39
drcode wrote: post #18

Back in the day, Microsoft would use a strategy called "embrace, extend, extinguish." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish Recently, Microsoft has been pushing Javascript very hard (embrace) and now it looks like they've started the "extend" phase. Luckily, no one really worries about them being able to pull off the "extinguish" part anymore... they just don't have enough market power these day…

Except that this is fully open source, which makes it a little difficult for MS to retain control over it, no? Re-reading late 90s M$ memes gets old after a time.

Microsoft was so ruthless, and dominating in the 1990's that it will be incredibly difficult to convince any developer that was streamrolled by this company to give them a second chance.

Re: TypeScript: a language for application-scale JavaScript development

#258

Post by shawndellysse »

georgemcbay wrote: post #206
jonknee wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the problems with Javascript you speak of? The libraries hiding you from terrible bits, at least the ones I use, have to do with the DOM and not with Javascript.

Variable scoping, unavoidable global namespace pollution, === vs == insanity, etc.

But how do libraries help you from that?

Re: TypeScript: a language for application-scale JavaScript development

#259

Post by fusiongyro »

maratd wrote: post #220
discreteevent wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google deliberately opened up dart development early. I thing that was a good thing. They could have kept it closed and released it today, it's roughly as mature as type script seems to be. Would you have been happier with that?

> Would you have been happier with that? Yes. Google (and others) need to stop releasing half-baked products. You release something half-baked, even if it gets up to speed down the road, people will still have perceptions of it being half-baked. The above exchange is typical.

I heard a kid complaining about Java being slow yesterday. People remember their first experiences for a long, long time after they stop being true.

Re: TypeScript: a language for application-scale JavaScript development

#260

Post by pooriaazimi »

georgemcbay wrote: post #206
jonknee wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the problems with Javascript you speak of? The libraries hiding you from terrible bits, at least the ones I use, have to do with the DOM and not with Javascript.

Variable scoping, unavoidable global namespace pollution, === vs == insanity, etc.

Last week I learned about another crazy "feature": Function hoisting

http://elegantcode.com/2011/03/24/basic-javascript-part-12-f...

Post reply on HN