4 ms·

"Oh god, do we need another language that compiles to javascript?!" —Everyone, probably

by trafnar 11y ago

yellowapple 11y ago
There shall be no peace until every language compiles to Javascript.
- webjprgm 11y ago
  Does a VM of a PC count as a JIT compiler? Can we compile VirtualBox to JS using one of those C->JS compilers? I'm sure we can come up with some stack of turtles here ...
bbrennan 11y ago
JS is the new JVM. Write once, run anywhere is still the dream, I'm glad new programming languages are taking advantage of JavaScript's versatility.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  It's better than the JVM. It provides an excellent, high-performance runtime for dynamic languages (JS), and an excellent, high-performance runtime for static, memory-unsafe languages (asm.js)!
- toyg 11y ago
  > Write once, run anywhere is still the dream More like "write once, run in the browser". I don't think most compile-to-js languages care too much about "anywhere", they are just trying to get nicer alternatives in what is basically a platform (the browser) closed to anything except JS.
  - fineline 11y ago
    The examples in the article seem much more focused on NodeJS.
  - woah 11y ago
    JavaScript will run anywhere
    - saraid216 11y ago
      Javascript will run anywhere you have something to run it on, same as Java, or any other language.
denysonique 11y ago
Why not? Maybe most of us are not going to use it, but the free market of growing programming languages will have an overall positive effect by inspiring other langs, such as many features of ES6 being inspired by CoffeeScript et cetera. Competition is good, competition is creativity.
- webjprgm 11y ago
  I like seeing the trends of what features show up frequently in new languages. These features manage to work their way into more popular languages, either as changes to existing ones like Java or C++11 or new languages like Swift and Go.
gklitt 11y ago
I think it's unfortunate that this is currently the top comment on this post. Someone puts hundreds of commits of work into a nifty language with a nice feature set (including compile-to-js) and awesome integrations, and this is what they get on HN... I think this looks like a great project, we can never have too many programming languages to play around with.
- msl09 11y ago
  >we can never have too many programming languages to play around with. Wait until we start having legacy code in all those languages. >we use 30 different compile-to-js languages used in our projects(that are no longer being developed) and you have to maintain it.
  - voltagex_ 11y ago
    Shouldn't the tech leads in that case be picking one well maintained variant, then?
    - webjprgm 11y ago
      With what crystal ball? If you pick based on history, since you kinda have to, then you pick a more mature (older) language. If you're not careful with that you pick languages just before they go obsolete. (Like a company I know which picked VB 6 and still hasn't fully migrated away from it. The same company picked Microsoft's AJAX demo as a basis for a JS framework and is still developing that even though MS long since abandoned it. Would it be better to use jQuery, Angular, Ember, React, Riot, etc? Well, those are too new and untested. Very conservative leadership.) Anyway CoffeeScript and JavaScript work well together and you might want your code to be in CoffeeScript but you have to use a library, say Ember (also a real project at a different company) which means certain improvements, bug fixes, etc. to Ember are done in JS. There's two. I'm sure you could easily end up with multiple libraries written in multiple compile-to-JS languages. Long-term code maintainability is a bit of a hard problem. You probably need to be constantly refactoring, rewriting, and re-inventing so you don't have too much old code in play anyway. Maybe. What do I know?
bratsche 11y ago
That was my first reaction until I scrolled down the page a little. This language looks really nice.
braythwayt 11y ago
Everyone says, “We don’t need any new programming languages cluttering up code bases,” but nobody volunteers to backport their own apps to COBOL.
visarga 11y ago
I quite like this one, though,

"Oh god, do we need another language that compiles to javascript?!" —Everyone, probably

by trafnar 11y ago

"Oh god, do we need another language that compiles to javascript?!" —Everyone, probably

yellowapple 11y ago

There shall be no peace until every language compiles to Javascript.

webjprgm 11y ago
Does a VM of a PC count as a JIT compiler? Can we compile VirtualBox to JS using one of those C->JS compilers? I'm sure we can come up with some stack of turtles here ...

bbrennan 11y ago

JS is the new JVM. Write once, run anywhere is still the dream, I'm glad new programming languages are taking advantage of JavaScript's versatility.

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
It's better than the JVM. It provides an excellent, high-performance runtime for dynamic languages (JS), and an excellent, high-performance runtime for static, memory-unsafe languages (asm.js)!
toyg 11y ago
> Write once, run anywhere is still the dream More like "write once, run in the browser". I don't think most compile-to-js languages care too much about "anywhere", they are just trying to get nicer alternatives in what is basically a platform (the browser) closed to anything except JS.
- fineline 11y ago
  The examples in the article seem much more focused on NodeJS.
- woah 11y ago
  JavaScript will run anywhere
  - saraid216 11y ago
    Javascript will run anywhere you have something to run it on, same as Java, or any other language.

denysonique 11y ago

Why not? Maybe most of us are not going to use it, but the free market of growing programming languages will have an overall positive effect by inspiring other langs, such as many features of ES6 being inspired by CoffeeScript et cetera. Competition is good, competition is creativity.

webjprgm 11y ago
I like seeing the trends of what features show up frequently in new languages. These features manage to work their way into more popular languages, either as changes to existing ones like Java or C++11 or new languages like Swift and Go.

gklitt 11y ago

I think it's unfortunate that this is currently the top comment on this post. Someone puts hundreds of commits of work into a nifty language with a nice feature set (including compile-to-js) and awesome integrations, and this is what they get on HN... I think this looks like a great project, we can never have too many programming languages to play around with.

msl09 11y ago
>we can never have too many programming languages to play around with. Wait until we start having legacy code in all those languages. >we use 30 different compile-to-js languages used in our projects(that are no longer being developed) and you have to maintain it.
- voltagex_ 11y ago
  Shouldn't the tech leads in that case be picking one well maintained variant, then?
  - webjprgm 11y ago
    With what crystal ball? If you pick based on history, since you kinda have to, then you pick a more mature (older) language. If you're not careful with that you pick languages just before they go obsolete. (Like a company I know which picked VB 6 and still hasn't fully migrated away from it. The same company picked Microsoft's AJAX demo as a basis for a JS framework and is still developing that even though MS long since abandoned it. Would it be better to use jQuery, Angular, Ember, React, Riot, etc? Well, those are too new and untested. Very conservative leadership.) Anyway CoffeeScript and JavaScript work well together and you might want your code to be in CoffeeScript but you have to use a library, say Ember (also a real project at a different company) which means certain improvements, bug fixes, etc. to Ember are done in JS. There's two. I'm sure you could easily end up with multiple libraries written in multiple compile-to-JS languages. Long-term code maintainability is a bit of a hard problem. You probably need to be constantly refactoring, rewriting, and re-inventing so you don't have too much old code in play anyway. Maybe. What do I know?

bratsche 11y ago

That was my first reaction until I scrolled down the page a little. This language looks really nice.

braythwayt 11y ago

Everyone says, “We don’t need any new programming languages cluttering up code bases,” but nobody volunteers to backport their own apps to COBOL.

visarga 11y ago

I quite like this one, though,