7 ms·

Is MS building a C# on JavaScript runtime?

32 points by cek 14y ago

drharris 14y ago
This title is greatly misleading. The article (nor what it's talking about) has nothing to do with a "C# on Javascript" runtime, and that would be ludicrous. Anders is a language designer, so it makes a lot of sense he would use his knowledge to help improve language support for the next big thing. C# has matured; Javascript can still use some work.
- cincinnatus 14y ago
  Oddly ms already has/had some sort of 'compiler'. Memory is fuzzy on it, internal use and only used to build one thing, libs for messenger in browser I think.
  - kevingadd 14y ago
    IIRC they employ the guy who wrote Script# and they use it for some projects.
  - aschearer 14y ago
    You're thinking of Script# (http://scriptsharp.com/ http://scriptsharp.com/) and it's used at the very least to develop the Office web apps as well as Exchange's Outlook Web Access.
  - drharris 14y ago
    I'd suspect they have several tools like this for code portability. It's relatively trivial to make a simple translator that compiles to Javascript; take CoffeeScript for example. I'd be surprised if there weren't all sorts of tools like these floating around Redmond. The notion of a "runtime" sitting on top of Javascript? That doesn't even make sense. It would also be a waste of Anders's strengths. His strength is in taking something popular and making it modern and usable (e.g. Java -> C#). Coming from him, I'd expect more along the lines of a framework or language extension or ECMA contribution than a runtime or compiler.
- ghurlman 14y ago
  Agreed - the real news here is that Anders Hejlsberg is doing something that not only isn't C#, but is JS-related. Surprising, and therefore immediately interesting. Where's that headline changing mod, when you need him? ;)
  - zwieback 14y ago
    In general, the evolution of JavaScript from most-ridiculed to one of the most-used languages is surprising.
    - ghurlman 14y ago
      I don't think JS ever registered in my mind as most ridiculed at all. If it was, it was just by folks that didn't know better.
- cek 14y ago
  Consider this: At Goto in Aarus [1] Anders is giving a keynote on "A yet to be disclosed project in the Development Tools space". Sometime in the last 2 days this page [1] changed. It previously listed a co-presenter with Anders from the Chakra JavaScript team. Not sure why the other presenter (can't remember his name) was removed; it could be as simple as he can't make the trip. Or Microsoft was afraid of letting the cat out of the bag too early? [1] http://gotocon.com/aarhus-2012/presentation/Closing%20Keynote:%20A%20yet%20to%20be%20disclosed%20project%20in%20the%20Development%20Tools%20space http://gotocon.com/aarhus-2012/presentation/Closing%20Keynot...
pjmlp 14y ago
Maybe they will announce an AOT compiler for C#, since they had open positions for it some months ago.
- lucian1900 14y ago
  I think most of the people interested in that are already working on Mono.
  - bunderbunder 14y ago
    Yup, and Xamarin's put it to great use on mobile devices. Incidentally, Microsoft's got their own line of mobile devices that run their own implementation of .NET which doesn't currently support real AOT compiling. (Just ngen.)
    - pjmlp 14y ago
      Mono's AOT has some restrictions, not all type of code can be compiled into native code. http://www.mono-project.com/AOT http://www.mono-project.com/AOT
- eckyptang 14y ago
  There is one already - it's called ngen.exe and it shipped with v1.0 of the framework. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/6t9t5wcf%28v=vs.80%29.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/6t9t5wcf%28v=vs.80%2...
  - pjmlp 14y ago
    Thanks for letting a .NET developer that was part of .NET Beta Partners program know about NGEN. I meant a way to convert the application to binary that you can distribute without having a CLR VM installed.
    - eckyptang 14y ago
      The OS usually ships with it or it can be bootstrapped easily. I don't see the problem. We deploy 4.0 framework with our desktop software as well. ClickOnce takes care of the installation with the package manifest. Github also do that with their GitHub for Windows app.
calinet6 14y ago
"Microsoft could potentially add some new, interesting features to the JavaScript standard".... Scary! Don't do it Microsoft—don't screw this up again. We spent ten years dealing with your "add some new, interesting features to the ??? standard," and we won't tolerate ten more. Standards are there for a reason. Do as you will, but don't break compatibility with the greater web.
- ssmoot 14y ago
  They did invent Ajax (AFAIK). So it's not all bad. And IIRC Canvas was in Safari before it became standard (it is now right?). I don't think vendor specific extensions are necessarily a bad thing. The bigger issue with IE was just that it stagnated so long. If the IE6 to IE10 cycle, which happened over just a few years, would have happened when it should of, I don't think we'd have nearly as much to complain about when it came to browsers. The Java situation was a bit different I guess, but honestly that may have a lot more to do with the state of non-MS platforms not really having an analogue to the J/Direct and RNI stuff? Wasn't really into Java at the time so I dunno if that's fair or not.
  - calinet6 14y ago
    > They did invent Ajax (AFAIK). So it's not all bad. May be true—but the mechanism for XMLHTTPRequest (and async requests in general, through iframes or other ways) was around far before anyone had the bright idea to do anything with it, so it was more of a stroke of luck.
    - ssmoot 14y ago
      I think you misread me. They (AFAIK) invented the first XmlHttpRequest implementation years before anyone else. In fact, there's comments/submissions on this site describing developer experiences with AJAX on IE before anyone called it that. I'm not claiming MS coined the term AJAX. They didn't. I am claiming some bright people there saw the potential in it years before anyone else, and then released an actual implementation you could use. No idea who that was, if it was a lone shark sneaking it into the system, or if it was a team/management effort that saw the potential in the idea and ran with it, but that person deserves a cookie.
noblethrasher 14y ago
Erik Meijer has — for sometime now — advocated treating Javascript as a target language. This fact would be unremarkable except that a few years ago he advocated bringing functional programming to the .NET platform and we ended up with LINQ.
- nrb 14y ago
  LINQ was never an attempt at functional programming; it's an exercise in querying collections in a type-safe manner. Perhaps you were thinking of F#?
  - pjmlp 14y ago
    Maybe you should read this, research.microsoft.com/~emeijer/papers/es012-meijer.pdf LINQ is based in Monads.
swalsh 14y ago
I LOVE C#... its a really great language. I use it every day, and have been doing so for the past 4 years. But the thought of "Microsoft Javascript" scares the shit out of me.
CodeCube 14y ago
I'm hoping this is what ultimately became of Volta: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Live_Labs_Volta http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Live_Labs_Volta Basically, you could write C# and mark different segments of the code as being server side and client side. the client side code would be compiled to JavaScript and run in the browser ... and you got full debug support across tiers with the original uncompiled C# source.
azakai 14y ago
It would make sense for Microsoft to invest in tools to run C# or .NET code in general in JavaScript, because letting people use Microsoft dev tools that they are familiar with (Visual Studio) + letting them generate code that runs on the web without plugins = win. There are already some tools for this, Script# from Microsoft, JSIL and so forth. Would be nice if Microsoft decided to officially support this approach with something very robust.

32 points by cek 14y ago

This title is greatly misleading. The article (nor what it's talking about) has nothing to do with a "C# on Javascript" runtime, and that would be ludicrous. Anders is a language designer, so it makes a lot of sense he would use his knowledge to help improve language support for the next big thing. C# has matured; Javascript can still use some work.

cincinnatus 14y ago
Oddly ms already has/had some sort of 'compiler'. Memory is fuzzy on it, internal use and only used to build one thing, libs for messenger in browser I think.
- kevingadd 14y ago
  IIRC they employ the guy who wrote Script# and they use it for some projects.
- aschearer 14y ago
  You're thinking of Script# (http://scriptsharp.com/ http://scriptsharp.com/) and it's used at the very least to develop the Office web apps as well as Exchange's Outlook Web Access.
- drharris 14y ago
  I'd suspect they have several tools like this for code portability. It's relatively trivial to make a simple translator that compiles to Javascript; take CoffeeScript for example. I'd be surprised if there weren't all sorts of tools like these floating around Redmond. The notion of a "runtime" sitting on top of Javascript? That doesn't even make sense. It would also be a waste of Anders's strengths. His strength is in taking something popular and making it modern and usable (e.g. Java -> C#). Coming from him, I'd expect more along the lines of a framework or language extension or ECMA contribution than a runtime or compiler.
ghurlman 14y ago
Agreed - the real news here is that Anders Hejlsberg is doing something that not only isn't C#, but is JS-related. Surprising, and therefore immediately interesting. Where's that headline changing mod, when you need him? ;)
- zwieback 14y ago
  In general, the evolution of JavaScript from most-ridiculed to one of the most-used languages is surprising.
  - ghurlman 14y ago
    I don't think JS ever registered in my mind as most ridiculed at all. If it was, it was just by folks that didn't know better.
cek 14y ago
Consider this: At Goto in Aarus [1] Anders is giving a keynote on "A yet to be disclosed project in the Development Tools space". Sometime in the last 2 days this page [1] changed. It previously listed a co-presenter with Anders from the Chakra JavaScript team. Not sure why the other presenter (can't remember his name) was removed; it could be as simple as he can't make the trip. Or Microsoft was afraid of letting the cat out of the bag too early? [1] http://gotocon.com/aarhus-2012/presentation/Closing%20Keynote:%20A%20yet%20to%20be%20disclosed%20project%20in%20the%20Development%20Tools%20space http://gotocon.com/aarhus-2012/presentation/Closing%20Keynot...

pjmlp 14y ago

Maybe they will announce an AOT compiler for C#, since they had open positions for it some months ago.

lucian1900 14y ago
I think most of the people interested in that are already working on Mono.
- bunderbunder 14y ago
  Yup, and Xamarin's put it to great use on mobile devices. Incidentally, Microsoft's got their own line of mobile devices that run their own implementation of .NET which doesn't currently support real AOT compiling. (Just ngen.)
  - pjmlp 14y ago
    Mono's AOT has some restrictions, not all type of code can be compiled into native code. http://www.mono-project.com/AOT http://www.mono-project.com/AOT
eckyptang 14y ago
There is one already - it's called ngen.exe and it shipped with v1.0 of the framework. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/6t9t5wcf%28v=vs.80%29.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/6t9t5wcf%28v=vs.80%2...
- pjmlp 14y ago
  Thanks for letting a .NET developer that was part of .NET Beta Partners program know about NGEN. I meant a way to convert the application to binary that you can distribute without having a CLR VM installed.
  - eckyptang 14y ago
    The OS usually ships with it or it can be bootstrapped easily. I don't see the problem. We deploy 4.0 framework with our desktop software as well. ClickOnce takes care of the installation with the package manifest. Github also do that with their GitHub for Windows app.

calinet6 14y ago

"Microsoft could potentially add some new, interesting features to the JavaScript standard".... Scary! Don't do it Microsoft—don't screw this up again. We spent ten years dealing with your "add some new, interesting features to the ??? standard," and we won't tolerate ten more. Standards are there for a reason. Do as you will, but don't break compatibility with the greater web.

ssmoot 14y ago
They did invent Ajax (AFAIK). So it's not all bad. And IIRC Canvas was in Safari before it became standard (it is now right?). I don't think vendor specific extensions are necessarily a bad thing. The bigger issue with IE was just that it stagnated so long. If the IE6 to IE10 cycle, which happened over just a few years, would have happened when it should of, I don't think we'd have nearly as much to complain about when it came to browsers. The Java situation was a bit different I guess, but honestly that may have a lot more to do with the state of non-MS platforms not really having an analogue to the J/Direct and RNI stuff? Wasn't really into Java at the time so I dunno if that's fair or not.
- calinet6 14y ago
  > They did invent Ajax (AFAIK). So it's not all bad. May be true—but the mechanism for XMLHTTPRequest (and async requests in general, through iframes or other ways) was around far before anyone had the bright idea to do anything with it, so it was more of a stroke of luck.
  - ssmoot 14y ago
    I think you misread me. They (AFAIK) invented the first XmlHttpRequest implementation years before anyone else. In fact, there's comments/submissions on this site describing developer experiences with AJAX on IE before anyone called it that. I'm not claiming MS coined the term AJAX. They didn't. I am claiming some bright people there saw the potential in it years before anyone else, and then released an actual implementation you could use. No idea who that was, if it was a lone shark sneaking it into the system, or if it was a team/management effort that saw the potential in the idea and ran with it, but that person deserves a cookie.

noblethrasher 14y ago

Erik Meijer has — for sometime now — advocated treating Javascript as a target language. This fact would be unremarkable except that a few years ago he advocated bringing functional programming to the .NET platform and we ended up with LINQ.

nrb 14y ago
LINQ was never an attempt at functional programming; it's an exercise in querying collections in a type-safe manner. Perhaps you were thinking of F#?
- pjmlp 14y ago
  Maybe you should read this, research.microsoft.com/~emeijer/papers/es012-meijer.pdf LINQ is based in Monads.

swalsh 14y ago

I LOVE C#... its a really great language. I use it every day, and have been doing so for the past 4 years. But the thought of "Microsoft Javascript" scares the shit out of me.

CodeCube 14y ago

I'm hoping this is what ultimately became of Volta: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Live_Labs_Volta http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Live_Labs_Volta Basically, you could write C# and mark different segments of the code as being server side and client side. the client side code would be compiled to JavaScript and run in the browser ... and you got full debug support across tiers with the original uncompiled C# source.

azakai 14y ago

It would make sense for Microsoft to invest in tools to run C# or .NET code in general in JavaScript, because letting people use Microsoft dev tools that they are familiar with (Visual Studio) + letting them generate code that runs on the web without plugins = win. There are already some tools for this, Script# from Microsoft, JSIL and so forth. Would be nice if Microsoft decided to officially support this approach with something very robust.