Anders Hejlsberg on why they had to fix JavaScript

By GitHub

Categories: Product, Tools

Summary

JavaScript had become so difficult to work with at scale that Microsoft had to develop a C# to JavaScript compiler called ScriptSharp, as the 'worst of both worlds' was still better than trying to build large apps directly in JavaScript.

Key Takeaways

  1. Developers were struggling to build large applications in the dynamic, weakly-typed JavaScript language without proper tooling support.
  2. Microsoft's ScriptSharp allowed developers to write in C# and compile to JavaScript, providing them with 'grown-up tooling' to overcome JavaScript's limitations.
  3. The limitations of JavaScript at scale led Microsoft to explore ways to 'fix' the language, rather than just telling developers to use a different language entirely.
  4. Large tech teams like the Outlook.com team were actively seeking solutions to the challenges of building big applications in JavaScript, indicating a widespread industry problem.
  5. JavaScript's success as a runtime and UI platform led to it being used for larger and larger applications, exposing the shortcomings of the language for such use cases.
  6. Microsoft's exploration of ways to 'fix' JavaScript, rather than just recommending alternative languages, suggests a commitment to improving the core language and tooling for developers.

Topics

Transcript Excerpt

this interesting thing started to happen in in the industry where the runtimes were getting good enough and all of a sudden you know Java code actually ran with decent performance and the world all of a sudden sort of discovered you know the real platform game isn't Java it's actually JavaScript and the browser and HTML and then they started writing bigger and bigger and bigger apps because this these new runtimes and UI technologies allowed the apps to get big But then everyone started discover...