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Similar attempts include Scalajs. The general challenge becomes integrating the fractional front-end code written in your backend-language that compiles to JS
by philipwhiuk 3mo ago
Similar attempts include Scalajs.
The general challenge becomes integrating the fractional front-end code written in your backend-language that compiles to JS with the rest of the JS ecosystem.
JaneStreet have a love of writing their own stuff from scratch so it doesn't apply to them but it might to you.
Hence most people end up with frontend-as-backend rather than backend-as-frontend.
- lbourdages 3mo agoCouldn't WASM solve that problem once and for all? Is there some limitation that WASM has that JS doesn't? Disclaimer: I am very inexperienced at front-end development.
- danielheath 3mo ago> Is there some limitation that WASM has that JS doesn't? You need a JS trampoline to call your WASM and make browser primitives available to it, and IIRC calls into browser code incur some extra overhead, but those are pretty manageable. Additionally: for high level languages, source code is _much_ smaller than compiled binaries. If your initial needs are simple, your users are likely downloading more than 10x as much code.
- applfanboysbgon 3mo agoWASM does not (yet) have access to the DOM or web APIs, meaning every direct interaction with the browser must first go through JS interop anyways, with a resulting performance penalty. There are proposals, and maybe we'll see it happen by 2035, but as of now WASM is best suited for heavier workloads where the edge in application performance outweighs the cost of JS interop with the browser rather than being a universal solution.
- raphinou 3mo agoSuch attempts are quite common. Some I remember: https://ocsigen.org/ https://ocsigen.org/ in Ocaml too https://websharper.com/ https://websharper.com/ for fsharp and csharp. Really good when I used in in fsharp Maybe https://melange.re/v7.0.1/ https://melange.re/v7.0.1/ too? (Not sure)
- vintermann 3mo agoI took this as a joke in reference to the popularity of JavaScript on the backend for the last two decades.
- reactordev 3mo agothat's because most people's intro to CS was how to build a webpage.
- zero_bias 3mo agoModern web development is more like computer alchemy
- nobleach 3mo agoYup, and Clojure/ClojureScript!
- vips7L 3mo agoKotlinJs and ClojureJs too. You always end up having to write wrappers or dealing with problems that would just work if you just used normal js/ts.
- gleenn 3mo agoClojurescript not ClojureJs, and Typescript doesn't run in the browser, it has the exact same issues/limitations: it must be compiled to JavaScript first.
- warpech 3mo agoCompiling TypeScript is just stripping out types
- Stratoscope 3mo agoThat is true only if you confine your TS code to be pure JS plus type annotations. There are TS constructs that require compilation into equivalent JS, such as enums and namespaces.
- hermanradtke 3mo agoAre there any other? Namespaces are heavily discouraged. Some teams still use enigma but most people in the know us unions of strings. I know the TS team regrets enums and I have not seen any plans for adding additional keywords that break type stripping.
- Stratoscope 3mo agoThe other one I read about was parameter properties in constructors. And thank you for the correction! It was quite a few years ago that I used TypeScript, and I think the landscape was different then. Making things even fuzzier in my mind, this was an Angular project, and it was hard to keep track of what was Angular and what was TypeScript. It sounds like people these days actively avoid the parts of TypeScript that require translation into different JS code.
- emmelaich 3mo agoGoes way back to 2006 with GWT. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Web_Toolkit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Web_Toolkit