Hacker News Reader

I find it funny - the first language I learned was ActionScript 3 (built on ECMA 4 proposal) and I become a Flash developer aka laughing stock. I remember I had very rough time transitioning to JavaScript because it felt like a stone age compared to ActionScript 3. Then came TS and saved me and dare I say the whole web.

View on HN

You should also have a look at Haxe, which comes from an ActionScript-inspired syntax, and compiles to JS (and a whole bunch of other languages, including ActionScript). It has even better language features than TypeScript (gotta love compile-time macros), although TypeScript has the benefit of adding features in an attempt to describe existing JavaScript code using types, so the interop with JS libs is easier.

Did you know that Microsoft was part of the cabal against ES4, proposing a competing and very modest ES3.1 which became ES5?

MS was on both sides of it. Remember JS.NET? It was veey ES4'ish (for early definitions of ES4, anyway).

No, I didn't know about it...

Still, the hostility from the "against" side (which also included Yahoo and a pre-Chrome Google) was enough to derail the effort.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com