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Yes - you deduced correctly! There was a long period of parallel evolution. Over the last few years we've been able to get back on the standards track. The a

Yes - you deduced correctly! There was a long period of parallel evolution. Over the last few years we've been able to get back on the standards track. The article describes this as one of the guiding principles. It's why we participate in TC39. Nowadays our tooling stack now uses TypeScript, Babel, Rollup & Terser which I regard as the most mainstream of choices. And we go out of our way to keep things aligned with ECMAScript, e.g. preventing the use of "experimentalDecorators".

jgalt212 6y ago
Bloomberg often gets accused of "not invented here" syndrome. But often times in the past, it's been the case that what they need hasn't been invented yet.
- munificent 6y ago
  Would that make it "invented here" syndrome?
  - erikerikson 6y ago
    Traditionally NIH is the reason for rejecting things. The inverse would be accepting things because they are invented here.
- ng12 6y ago
  This is endemic in the finance industry. Build something cutting-edge, rake in a bunch of money, and then let your tech rust.
yaacov 6y ago
Why did Bloomberg adopt server-side JS in 2005?
- exdsq 6y ago
  I really want to know the answer to this question, seems a hell of a risk to move to JS prior to Node (for me it’s still a risk even after node because JS!).
  - robpalmer 6y ago
    In the early 2000s it was recognized that the C/C++ code-build-run-debug development feedback loop was taking too long for efficient application development. 10-30 minutes to try out changes. It would have been risky not to try something new. JavaScript revolutionized this, bringing the developer feedback loop time back down to a few seconds. Andrew Paprocki's 2011 JSConf talk demonstrates this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODgs0eWAIKc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODgs0eWAIKc The main competing technology at the time was Lua which would probably have been a fine alternative. JS won. Four years later Node was released which took server-side JS to a mainstream audience and helped validate the choice. Ten years later saw the ES6 renaissance and the rise of JS as a credible language for application development. Now TypeScript takes it to the next level, enabling large robust systems to be efficiently built using JS. I'm pleased we bet on JS.
    - 0x445442 6y ago
      > The main competing technology at the time was Lua The main competing technology for what exactly? I could easily think of 10 other server side choices off the top of my head from the 2005 time frame; like Java or C# to name a couple. Something is missing here.
      - addicted 6y ago
        Interpreted languages with no compile time it seems.
    - SiVal 6y ago
      It wasn't an option back then, but now, if you wanted both a typed language and rapid code-build-run-debug for the server side, you could go even faster and simpler (snappy single-step compile to native executable) with Go. If you were starting now, would that work even better for you, or would other benefits of server-side JS outweigh the more complex toolchain and deployment?

jgalt212 6y ago

Bloomberg often gets accused of "not invented here" syndrome. But often times in the past, it's been the case that what they need hasn't been invented yet.

munificent 6y ago
Would that make it "invented here" syndrome?
- erikerikson 6y ago
  Traditionally NIH is the reason for rejecting things. The inverse would be accepting things because they are invented here.
ng12 6y ago
This is endemic in the finance industry. Build something cutting-edge, rake in a bunch of money, and then let your tech rust.

yaacov 6y ago

Why did Bloomberg adopt server-side JS in 2005?

exdsq 6y ago
I really want to know the answer to this question, seems a hell of a risk to move to JS prior to Node (for me it’s still a risk even after node because JS!).
- robpalmer 6y ago
  In the early 2000s it was recognized that the C/C++ code-build-run-debug development feedback loop was taking too long for efficient application development. 10-30 minutes to try out changes. It would have been risky not to try something new. JavaScript revolutionized this, bringing the developer feedback loop time back down to a few seconds. Andrew Paprocki's 2011 JSConf talk demonstrates this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODgs0eWAIKc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODgs0eWAIKc The main competing technology at the time was Lua which would probably have been a fine alternative. JS won. Four years later Node was released which took server-side JS to a mainstream audience and helped validate the choice. Ten years later saw the ES6 renaissance and the rise of JS as a credible language for application development. Now TypeScript takes it to the next level, enabling large robust systems to be efficiently built using JS. I'm pleased we bet on JS.
  - 0x445442 6y ago
    > The main competing technology at the time was Lua The main competing technology for what exactly? I could easily think of 10 other server side choices off the top of my head from the 2005 time frame; like Java or C# to name a couple. Something is missing here.
    - addicted 6y ago
      Interpreted languages with no compile time it seems.
  - SiVal 6y ago
    It wasn't an option back then, but now, if you wanted both a typed language and rapid code-build-run-debug for the server side, you could go even faster and simpler (snappy single-step compile to native executable) with Go. If you were starting now, would that work even better for you, or would other benefits of server-side JS outweigh the more complex toolchain and deployment?