Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by aaron-lebo 3064 days ago
JS is a big language. It continues to grow without removing features. One codebase can be very functional, another dynamically typed C++ from 2004, another pythonic. As long as they support the entire language while adding static typing (not an easy feat), it's going to grow. In that sense it is very much like C++, though it's still not in the same league of complexity of C++.

If you want a small language, look elsewhere. I had fun with Bucklescript over the weekend, and it is amazing how expressive it is. The syntax sucks in places [| Reason is a small upgrade |], but that's probably where you want to look. Maybe Elm if you are fanatic about it.
1 comments
rco8786 3064 days ago
> JS is a big language.

Kind of(maybe). But that's beside the point. Typescript is a separate language that happens to compile to Javascript. The TS team is in no way bound to support every style of programming that Javascript supports (and they don't, just by virtue of having strict typing).

link
aaron-lebo 3064 days ago
They don't have to, but as long as they want to market themselves as a "typed superset of Javascript" (see homepage), they do. For many people, that is the point.
link
jrs95 3064 days ago
Yep. And this is important, it allows people to move most JS projects incrementally to TS projects. If they fall far behind the features that many JS projects are using, that won't be true anymore, and those people will start using Flow instead (flow.org)
link
WorldMaker 3064 days ago
Similarly it is useful for TS to track the Stage 3 proposals of future features and offer them early, as JS users may pick those up with Babel or other polyfills. Typescript's own transpilation behavior of Stage 3 proposal can sometimes be a useful test for the feature while browsers work on their own implementations.
link