[vardump]

If type safety is what you miss, why not to use some transpiler like TypeScript?

http://www.typescriptlang.org/Tutorial

[cballard]

Then you're not writing JavaScript, which was OP's concern. TypeScript is fine (although Elm, Swift, and Haskell are more interesting, IMO).

[vardump]

TypeScript is very close to normal JavaScript. It's basically just JavaScript + type annotations which a compiler can check.

Compilation phase removes the annotations, after that point it is pure JavaScript.

How are Swift and Haskell relevant for client side web development?

Edit: Removed Elm

[cies]

Are you aware of GHCJS, Haskell-to-JS, compiler? In the new and rather popular "build/dependency manager"[1] for Haskell, named Stack, you can now quite easily install this compiler.

And I think it is only a matter of time till someone writes a Swift-to-JS compiler (Apple might already have it on it's radar).

[1]: I know it is not a "build/dependency manager", but I don't know how to call better in for sake of this discussion.

[the_gipsy]

Elm's only target is the browser/JS.

[vardump]

I stand corrected. Never heard of Elm before, but I assumed from context it's non-JavaScript targeting language like Swift and Haskell.

[1ris]

Look at purescript. In order to install this madness you need to install not less than 5 package managers, but you might like it.

[purescript]

The situation has improved since cabal install was required.

npm install -g pulp purescript

should be enough now.