3 ms·

I worry about the long term viability of using an offshoot language of Javascript such as Coffeescript or Typescript. These types of languages have a habit of f

I worry about the long term viability of using an offshoot language of Javascript such as Coffeescript or Typescript. These types of languages have a habit of falling out of vogue and basically becoming a dead language, which is exactly what happened to coffeescript. If a company decided to write an app in coffeescript in 2010, today they have a big pile of code written in a dead language on their hands. If instead the company had chosen a mainstream language with a guaranteed future such as JS, Java, or c# it wouldn't be an issue.

ryanianian 6y ago
Typescript is nice in that it's a superset (mostly) of js. That doesn't mean it won't fall out of vogue, just that in a lot of cases converting from TS to JS is mostly straightforward, so you can "just" remove some type information and end up with valid JS.
- city41 6y ago
  You should be able to let tsc do it for you with a properly configured tsconfig file. Mostly just want it to not emit any polyfills.
heipei 6y ago
What do you mean by dead? It's still maintained and developed and still works great. Yeah, not many people are using it for new projects so if you're anxious about using something with the biggest "mindshare" then Coffeescript isn't for you, I give you that.
int_19h 6y ago
TypeScript is the best bet in that regard, because not only it's backed by a large software company, but that company also builds all of its web apps (and now also Electron desktop apps) using TS. The sheer amount of buy-in inside Microsoft is such that I'd expect it to be maintained for a very long time even if there were no external users at all. But then this reasonable expectation that it'll still be there 10 years from now is also what's driving external users to it, among other things. In fact, TypeScript is in PYPL top 10, and it's higher there than Go. It is a mainstream language now.

ryanianian 6y ago

Typescript is nice in that it's a superset (mostly) of js. That doesn't mean it won't fall out of vogue, just that in a lot of cases converting from TS to JS is mostly straightforward, so you can "just" remove some type information and end up with valid JS.

city41 6y ago
You should be able to let tsc do it for you with a properly configured tsconfig file. Mostly just want it to not emit any polyfills.

heipei 6y ago

What do you mean by dead? It's still maintained and developed and still works great. Yeah, not many people are using it for new projects so if you're anxious about using something with the biggest "mindshare" then Coffeescript isn't for you, I give you that.

int_19h 6y ago

TypeScript is the best bet in that regard, because not only it's backed by a large software company, but that company also builds all of its web apps (and now also Electron desktop apps) using TS. The sheer amount of buy-in inside Microsoft is such that I'd expect it to be maintained for a very long time even if there were no external users at all. But then this reasonable expectation that it'll still be there 10 years from now is also what's driving external users to it, among other things. In fact, TypeScript is in PYPL top 10, and it's higher there than Go. It is a mainstream language now.