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Comment by MichaelAza | Hacker News Reader

This seems like the Python of compile-to-JS languages in much the same way CofeeScript is the Ruby. Not a big fan of Python but I can see this becoming popular with Python WebDevs.

I kinda hope this doesn't become a trend though, every web development enviroment spawning its own compile-to-JS language. I feel that there are too many such languages already.

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I think it's closer to "the Scala of compile-t-JS languages" :) ...last time I checked Python didn't have macros and syntax for currying, function composition, piping etc. and its TIMTOWTDI philosophy seems closer to Ruby.

Honestly, the macros section scared me out, especially the "there are five types of macro syntaxes" (...this is as far away from the pythonic way of doing things as one can get) but this seems the most promising compile-to-Js language I've seen.

Macros can be scary. The need for five different syntaxes is because in a non-homoiconic language, positioning and syntax matter, so having an infix operator would be defined differently from a call-like macro. They all act fundamentally the same, it's just how you define the syntax of how they are used that is the difference.

Python has functools.partial for currying. Not built into the syntax but in the standard lib.

Interesting, I would have said CoffeeScript was more pythonic than this. It certainly doesn't remind me of Ruby, and to the extent that it's a different syntax for JavaScript than a different language, scoping is different but in practice you don't notice things that are very different in Python.

Thats what I was thinking too. I would like to simply see Ruby/Python compile into JS instead. It has been done actually (not sure about Ruby) - don't know how well it performs though.

I feel it pretty much holds true when you try to compile any language that was designed without JavaScript in mind into JavaScript, the result is likely to be ugly and/or imperformant. (Not always, e.g. asm.js)

GorillaScript is designed to run with JavaScript semantics and be as efficient as possible (within reason), so that when you write something as simple as `x + y` in GorillaScript, it is efficient, even with unknown types, unlike Python which would need to check `__add__` or Ruby with its operators-as-methods system.

Also, since JavaScript is so different from so many languages with async-by-default, handle through callbacks or promises or something, being able to replicate something as compilicated as Python's GIL in JavaScript would be atrocious as compared to designing your code in a language that nudges you to write "good" JavaScript.

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