Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript | Hacker News Reader

Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript

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43 pointspmontra24 comments

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17300893

Given that both are linking to the same tweet, maybe HN's de-dupe algorithm should check tweet links

Here's a pretty critical clarification: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8qqhlz/comment...

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Hi there!!! Original Tweeter here! I'm Sean and I'm a Program Manager at Microsoft working on Microsoft Edge and Edge Dev Tools!

Going to clarify across a few things. Some was lack of more then 280 chars in a tweet and not expecting this to get beyond #JavaScript twitter.

MS Teams, VS Code, is already written _with_ TypeScript which is compiled to JavaScript powered by Electron. It is an electron application. VS Code is on GitHub and Open Source if you'd like to see examples of how or what.

We are not abandoning C++, C#, or any of the other awesome languages, apis, and toolings that we use across Microsoft. EdgeHTML is almost entirely written in C++ like any other browser engine. However we do also run JavaScript (compiled from TypeScript) in DevTools, and leverage open source technologies like React and webpack to build the UI's for them.

Office 365's UI, a lot of it, but definitely not all of it, are pieces that are built using React Native (Windows). API's and Services are still going to be powered by C++, C#, or whatever is the most appropriate for that team. Nothing is converting to "all/completely" JavaScript/TypeScript.

React Native compiling JavaScript to "native code" is arguably wrong. Most of what is native are API's interactions and Native Modules that can be communicated with through JavaScript. WebViews power UI rendering thanks to React. Thanks to the Skype Engineer who sniped me on that in discussion.

Feel free to ask anything else! It's the least I can do for tweeting some pretty unclear messaging.

From the discussion from 2 days ago: "Hi there, original tweeter here. Just to clarify: no one said when this work would land, simply that we are working on it! Sorry to disappoint" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17300893

And then yesterday we got an article called “Microsoft Office rewrite in React.js nears completion” qouting a tweet that said “All of Office 365 is (almost finished) being completely rewritten in this little scripting language called #JavaScript.” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17310738

But I don’t know who Sean Thomas Larkin is, the author of the tweet.

Yeah, someone spoke out of turn.

I wonder if they are re-writing Clippy in Tensorflow

Insane.

Google Docs hasn't had a real upgrade since 2005 because they are stuck in callback hell and don't know how to do maintenance on the code.

Probably in the works in the background. Google tends to rewrite everything from scratch and ask people to migrate optionally until it's stable.

Well it wouldn't be difficult to avoid that fate these days, would it?

I assume they will be using TypeScript, async/await and so on. It's a pretty great language to write in, certainly comparable with C# in terms of maintainability IMO. And a later tweet clarifies that it's being used with React Native to create an actual native app rather than force a webview everywhere.

Everyone has a gut reaction to news like this, but it sounds good to me, and the reasons for doing it seem pretty clear.

Huh, I thought they wrote in Java and compiled it to JavaScript? Searching, I'm thinking of GWT - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Web_Toolkit - and it seems like a good candidate for Google Docs.

>Google Docs hasn't had a real upgrade since 2005 because they are stuck in callback hell

And we have to believe you on that because... ?

I take it you don't use Google Docs. It has improved considerably over the last few years: - better office import - better commenting / colab - several UI refreshs

It hasn't changed a lot in the last year or two, but with "since 2005" it's hard to take your comment seriously.

This is anecdotal, but I manage my golf league scoring with a relatively complex multi-sheet spreadsheet. In 2005 I couldn't even open it in docs. In 2010 I could open it, but many formulas didn't work. In 2013 most things worked, but it was unusably slow. Today it works flawlessly in Google Sheets and I don't even bother opening Excel anymore for it.

I'd say they've definitely made some upgrades.

Many Microsoft apps were developed in various forms of "pcode" since before Javascript or Java even exists, it's a well established part of the Microsoft way. The fact that the latest iteration involves javascript is interesting but is just an evolution, not a shift away from C++ or anything of the sort.

Excel macros in typescript please!

Please see:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/excel/cu...

https://github.com/OfficeDev/script-lab/

That tweet is taking a beating.

Pure JavaScript or MSs very own TypeScipt? The latter sounds much more feasible.

Well they mentioned VSCode which is Typescript, so my guess it's typescript. (MS also typically eat's their own dogfood)

This again?... We've had plenty of those in last few days, debunked all over again.

Finally! Maybe it will be more intuitive.

I can't think of a single instance of using an SPA or Electron app and thought "this feels really intuitive".

It's usually more "this feels slow, unreliable, and does things I don't expect".

Electron apps do tend to feel like their development is driven by bored designers who want to reinvent the wheel for the 5 millionth time and almost always favor form over function.

Don’t get me wrong, I prefer to use apps that look and feel great, but that shouldn’t ever come at the cost of functionality, responsiveness, etc. It’s a great example of where what benefits companies and what benefits users differs considerably (stable, functional, lightweight app vs. strong branding and cheap engineers).

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