
Microsoft Previews New JavaScript-Like Programming Language TypeScript - pbreit
http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/01/microsoft-previews-new-javascript-like-programming-language-typescript/
======
debacle
I have this strange sort of sinking feeling that HTML5 is going to hit the
open Internet in much the same way IE6 did. Every player in the game seems to
be working in a different direction and the browser is turning into something
much more than a vehicle for content.

I know I'm not the only one who believes this is a bad thing.

~~~
pippy
Right now that can't happen. Market share is dictating a productive
environment for HTML5 that forces standard compliant behaviour. Until a
browser comes out on top it's unlikely we'll see anything similar to what IE6
did to the web for sometime.

~~~
josteink
Except Google adding whatever they feel like to Chrome and feature hungry devs
pushing users to Chrome because MSIE lacks "HTML5 support", when what they
mean is that they want to use last week's experimental APIs in production
sites today.

And only writing for webkit when doing mobile. Screw Firefox, or Opera or
webstandards in general. Weehoo iPhone! (May also not break on Android)

It's already a strong trend. I say the fear is justified.

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jsight
The website itself has a lot more information:

<http://www.typescriptlang.org/>

At a glance, this looks like a rather elegant solution to the problem of
adding optional type-markers to JS without completely destroying the nature of
the language (as AS3 did, IMO).

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lucian1900
I find it interesting. Minimal addition, which adds a bit of strong typing to
JS.

Weak typing is the thing that annoys me the most in JS, coming from Python.

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MicroAndMacro
Sublime text, Vi and Emacs syntax files for TypeScript too
[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/interoperability/archive/2012/10/01/...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/interoperability/archive/2012/10/01/sublime-
text-vi-emacs-typescript-enabled.aspx)

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edtechdev
Added it to this long list of languages that compile to JavaScript:
[https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/wiki/List-of-
lang...](https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/wiki/List-of-languages-
that-compile-to-JS)

TypeScript is very similar in spirit to Dart, by Google. (see the 'Static
typing' section of the above webpage)

~~~
tlrobinson
See also: <http://altjs.org/>

There are mailing list and IRC channels linked from that page for those who
are interested in this stuff.

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alexanderh
As I posted in the other thread of this story:

What about debug support? I wont be using anything like Coffeescript or
TypeScript until they get their Code Mapping down for debugging. Until then
its nothing more than a cute novelty.

People claiming that its "not that hard to track down issues" without proper
code mapping, just aren't working on a large enough codebase.

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viggity
here is the blog link from MSDN
[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/somasegar/archive/2012/10/01/typescr...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/somasegar/archive/2012/10/01/typescript-
javascript-development-at-application-scale.aspx)

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reaktivo
I really like the Modules feature, it allows you to quickly namespace your
classes.

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malandrew
Larger discussion on HN over here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4597716>

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vivab0rg
Embrace, extend and extinguish?[1]

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish>

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dreamdu5t
Uhhh.. I hope Microsoft understands that JavaScript isn't popular because of
language features or syntax, it's popular because of widespread browser
support.

~~~
rcknight
This compiles to javascript ... whats the problem?

~~~
dudus
The problem is that the main benefit is a misdirection (syntax similar to
javascript), on top of that this doesn't add anything different than coffee
script or Dart already does.

This is a language without a proposal just to keep microsoft in the game.

Since Google and Mozilla have a javascript alternative we need one too

~~~
kenjackson
This is very different than my understanding of coffee script and dart in that
it is a superset of JS. This means you can incrementally make use of and learn
it.

MS came with a different approach. Rather than recreating the language of the
web they asked how they van make it better.

