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WelsonJS: Build a Windows app on the Windows built-in JavaScript engine

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Re: WelsonJS: Build a Windows app on the Windows built-in JavaScript engine

#41

Post by joquarky »

nsonha wrote: post #4
h335ian wrote: post #3

Been doing this since 1999. The only thing novel I see here is the transpilers - but you know… you don’t need that. You can build HTAs with native JavaScript, CSS and HTML - and with a little VBScript mixin, directly work with Windows libs. Back in ‘99 and early 00’s I was delivering “thin-client” control panels & management tools for server farms, sensitive accounting data, among a variety of other things. It was (a…

> using native JavaScript without all the BS that comes with TypeScript do you think javascript was just too easy and people had to invent some bs to make it more interesting for no reason? You don't even know what you're talking about when you make the connection from ts to oop. My experience comming into javascript is that it's a garbage language and the web stack was a joke, everything was hard for the wrong reaso…

How does the complexity of CSS make JS a "garbage language"?

Re: WelsonJS: Build a Windows app on the Windows built-in JavaScript engine

#42

Post by mynameisvlad »

meiraleal wrote: post #39
mynameisvlad wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s just like your opinion, man. Just because you think that doesn’t mean it’s true. The sheer fact that TS has overtaken JS for the majority of web development says enough.

[flagged]

You may want to read up on the HN guidelines and how your comments in this thread don't align with them.

If you have something to say about the content of my comment, go right ahead.

Re: WelsonJS: Build a Windows app on the Windows built-in JavaScript engine

#43

Post by mynameisvlad »

bdcravens wrote: post #30
mynameisvlad wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s just like your opinion, man. Just because you think that doesn’t mean it’s true. The sheer fact that TS has overtaken JS for the majority of web development says enough.

> TS has overtaken JS for the majority of web development Has it? Or is that "just like your opinion, man"? Any citation? There's some sources that say it's more popular based on things like social mentions, etc, but that's a vanity metric. Perhaps the statement is true if you mean "web development" to be a very limited scope (like SPA using a build step), but I'm not even sure that's true then.

For new, modern projects, yes. Very much so. There is practically no reason to choose JS over TS, even for high performance projects where every byte counts and you may want stricter control over the transpilation. The ecosystem has grown to the point where other optimizations like tree shaking do far more, and the improvement in the local dev cycle is insurmountable between the two.

Obviously this doesn't apply to existing projects; you're grandfathered into the language barring a pretty big undertaking to move over, but if you go to any competent company doing modern web development on relatively new codebases, they will use TS over JS.

And if they don't, as an engineer, you should ask hard questions as to why not. Because if the answer is someone stuck in the early 2000s complaining about OO and strong typing not being needed, then that's completely missing what TS does (and especially what it did when it was released, which was pre-ES5) and how big of an impact it has to speeding up development.

Re: WelsonJS: Build a Windows app on the Windows built-in JavaScript engine

#44

Post by throwitaway1123 »

cyanydeez wrote: post #40
throwitaway1123 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> JavaScript is so powerful and amazing, it’s a bummer to hamstring your app by using TypeScript and classic OO inheritance models that preclude the beauty and dynamics of JavaScript as a functional, prototypal language. The idea that Microsoft was attempting to turn JS into an object oriented C# clone was a very common objection in the early days of TS (especially since one of the lead developers on the project is a…

The problem i see is basicLly, youre doing forced TDD, and thats a inherent cost in quickly developing and deploying apps at the small scale where JS excels. Ita clearly great for large orgs and interchangeable devs.

I actually use TS as a way to avoid bothering with TDD. Many of the proponents of TDD are using dynamically typed languages, and need tests to verify every tiny little assertion about their code. I remember Eric Elliot had a bunch of posts on Medium years ago denouncing TS and claiming that TDD (and testing in general) obviates the need for types.

I'll accept that there are some intelligent developers out there that are more productive without static type checking, but I personally don't understand it. If you don't have a tool analyzing your program's types, then your brain becomes the type checker. I personally would much rather focus on higher level problems. I don't even see type checking and code formatting as human level concerns anymore, and would rather have my computer do it for me, but I guess it's just a preference. Do whatever works for you.

Re: WelsonJS: Build a Windows app on the Windows built-in JavaScript engine

#45

Post by meiraleal »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #42
meiraleal wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You may want to read up on the HN guidelines and how your comments in this thread don't align with them. If you have something to say about the content of my comment, go right ahead.

Did you check the guidelines when you posted this snarky rebuttal?

  > That’s just like your opinion, man.
  > Just because you think that doesn’t mean it’s true.

Re: WelsonJS: Build a Windows app on the Windows built-in JavaScript engine

#46

Post by IshKebab »

meiraleal wrote: post #38
h335ian wrote: post #3

Been doing this since 1999. The only thing novel I see here is the transpilers - but you know… you don’t need that. You can build HTAs with native JavaScript, CSS and HTML - and with a little VBScript mixin, directly work with Windows libs. Back in ‘99 and early 00’s I was delivering “thin-client” control panels & management tools for server farms, sensitive accounting data, among a variety of other things. It was (a…

The amount of people that think they know better in the comments is insane. TS warriors, give us a break.

> TS warriors

Ugh. Well if you will start spouting nonsense about JavaScript being better without Typescript then you can hardly be surprised when people correct you can you?

Would you complain about "airbag warriors" or "gps warriors" if you were making comments about how driving a car without them was so much better and GPS and airbags are BS?

Re: WelsonJS: Build a Windows app on the Windows built-in JavaScript engine

#47

Post by [deleted] »

h335ian wrote: post #3

Been doing this since 1999. The only thing novel I see here is the transpilers - but you know… you don’t need that. You can build HTAs with native JavaScript, CSS and HTML - and with a little VBScript mixin, directly work with Windows libs. Back in ‘99 and early 00’s I was delivering “thin-client” control panels & management tools for server farms, sensitive accounting data, among a variety of other things. It was (a…

[deleted]

Re: WelsonJS: Build a Windows app on the Windows built-in JavaScript engine

#48

Post by mappu »

HTAs are tied to MSHTML.dll (the old IE renderer) and WSH/CScript is tied to the old, slow IE javascript engine, right?

I would expect this to have very limited compatibility, and even with the transpiling, very limited performance. Or is it possible for this to somehow use Chakra, or Edge's V8 engine?

Re: WelsonJS: Build a Windows app on the Windows built-in JavaScript engine

#49

Post by gnh1201 »

cdaringe wrote: post #16

I saw a partial example, but not clear instructions on how to bootstrap a project. Did I miss it in the README? Or should it be obvious to me if I have some XYZ experience?

I have updated the README with the details on this. Thank you. :)

Re: WelsonJS: Build a Windows app on the Windows built-in JavaScript engine

#50

Post by thesecretsquad »

trashburger wrote: post #24
h335ian wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly, it’s functional with closures… From there prototypal - so you can express whatever you want… the key is being functional. This was a key to the advent of JSON, but is also one of the most elegant and powerful bits of JS

You're wrong. The prototypical model of JS was inspired by the Self programming language[0], itself a descendant of Smalltalk. It is a very crude implementation for sure, but it is object programming nevertheless. Closures being present sours the purity a bit, but closures are poor man's objects[1] anyway. [0]: https://selflanguage.org/ [1]: https://stackoverflow.com/a/11421598

Also, Smalltalk was heavily inspired by LISP[0]. The line between functional and object-oriented is quite blurry. Especially in a pure OO language like Smalltalk. The dynamic and prototypical model of JS is definitely another example of the subtle harmony of functional and OO.

[0]: https://worrydream.com/EarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk/

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