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In the end, the existence of the term "transpiler" has a negative effect on the perception that many developers have on the quality of languages that compile to
by ovao 9y ago
In the end, the existence of the term "transpiler" has a negative effect on the perception that many developers have on the quality of languages that compile to JS.
Is this actually true? Have there been actual widespread complaints about, say, TypeScript's quality because CofeeScript was labeled similarly?
- sjrd 9y agoFair enough. I think TypeScript enjoys some "protection" from the obvious complaints because it advertises itself as (and it is) "just JavaScript", with types. Therefore the complaints I often see about other languages compiling to JS are kind of moot or very easy to dismiss. For example "it eventually leaks JS" is dismissed as "yeah, duh! it is JS". TBH I do not have too much contact with TS other than its type definitions, so the experience I describe may not be relevant to TypeScript. I have repeatedly seen it for languages that provide a different set of abstractions than JS, though.
- kitten_mittens_ 9y agoThe post you're responding to is probably referring to languages that are further afield from JavaScript than Typescript (or coffeescript). After wrestling to get get purescript code within a factor of four difference between IE 11 and modern Chrome, I think the suspicion a lot of folks with a background in JS have for "compiled" v. "transpiled" is well deserved. Just because you target a runtime doesn't mean the nuts and bolts of ergonomics like existing library usage, profiling, and debugging are covered well.