> Since its inception, and throughout trends like Coffeescript, npm has mostly held the promise of only hosting JavaScript packages. I don't think this is true

> Since its inception, and throughout trends like Coffeescript, npm has mostly held the promise of only hosting JavaScript packages. I don't think this is true. There are multiple NPM packages that rely on non-JS extensions and external binaries to run. The entire `node-gyp` ecosystem, which is a pain because it makes it impossible to vendor dependencies in a portable way. On that front, compiled Typescript isn't that hard to read. I'm less concerned about someone cross-compiling a language into Javascript than I am about someone pushing a C binary alongside their code as part of the install script. WASM modules are going to start becoming more common in Node eventually. Deciphering Typescript with a pure-JS background is way easier than deciphering Rust. I see this argument come up with frameworks and libraries as well: "Javascript has too many frameworks, it makes it impossible to evaluate a 3rd-party package." I don't think the argument stands up to much scrutiny there, and I don't think it stands up to a ton of scrutiny here.