Should JavaScript be split into two languages?

Posted by em-bee 10/26/2024

Should JavaScript be split into two languages?(devclass.com)

142 points | 312 commentspage 4

cryptica 10/26/2024|

I was thinking we should split JavaScript based on the 'good parts' vs 'bad parts' as opposed to 'new features' vs 'existing features'.

That said I also see the rationale for that. JS is already getting heavy and we should limit feature creep.

8n4vidtmkvmk 10/26/2024||

I'm a little annoyed that they said Bigint uses cases never materialized. I've used it several times and it isn't something that's easy to transpile. A bigint class has bad ergonomics and there's no way the perf can be equivalent.

styfle 10/27/2024||

It’s because Google doesn’t use Node.js or any JS outside the browser, so they assume low browser usage is low usage in general which isn’t true.

https://github.com/search?q=BigInt+language%3ATypeScript&typ...

https://github.com/search?q=BigInt+language%3AJavaScript&typ...

senfiaj 10/27/2024||

Same toughs. It's irreplaceable when working with arbitrary sized integers. Even if it's used on 1-2% of websites, it's still a significant usage. Surely, it won't be used as commonly a regular floating point number.

ChrisAntaki 10/27/2024||

> this possible solution is Google’s preferred solution

Is it though? Sounds more like a single team's preference, and not necessarily a team of FE engineers

zb3 10/26/2024||

Why JS0 and not wasm? Why is wasm so damn limited?

singularity2001 10/26/2024|

  Why is wasm so damn limited?

After watching it evolve for many years my conclusion is either politics or it being run by the wrong people who think they literally need to invent the whole world (in component model) before they can give us basic string objects. No, wasm string objects were an independent feature in experimental Chrome for a while but they got removed again. Wasm structs are beautiful without the component model but useless because they can't be read or written in JS.

pabs3 10/27/2024||

Sounds like WASM is their JS0 already?

wiseowise 10/26/2024||

Add structs/value types, pattern matching and we can freeze the language until end of days.

ocular-rockular 10/26/2024||

The same could be said for R and Tidyverse crowd. Honestly two entirely separate visions.

game_the0ry 10/26/2024||

I hope not. I have a hard enough time trying to keep up with front end frameworks.

chunkyguy 10/26/2024||

> The tooling idea is particularly appropriate for JavaScript since many developers actually code in TypeScript and rely on compilers such as Babel, Webpack or the TypeScript compiler to output JavaScript.

Hot take

DidYaWipe 10/26/2024|

Can we clean up the TypeScript & JavaScript thing at the same time?

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