Hacker News Reader

Comment by matchu | Hacker News Reader

The C# function is global, so the compiled Javascript function is global. Feels to me like the most correct compilation of the C# code.

(Consider: the C# code has no main function, so, if we hid the GetBestMove definition from the rest of the webpage, it would never get called. The optimal Javascript compilation would be an empty string, and that's clearly not valuable.)

View on HN

I'm confused. C# doesn't even support global functions. In your example, it's a static private member of the AI class. Why is it wrong to generate

    var AI = {
        GetBestMove: function(....) { ... },
        ...
    };

Another thing, I had someone tell me once that according to Erik Meijer (of LINQ and Rx fame), years ago, Microsoft tried a C#-to-JS compiler too. It worked, but they had good reasons to drop the project anyway. Did you ever hear about that, do you know Microsoft's reasons for doing TypeScript instead? Are they still valid?

The project was Volta from Microsoft Live Labs. It was a technology preview but appears to have been canceled. There is also Script# by Nikhil Kothari from the .NET Platform group.

Hmm, I don't know C#; the method wasn't encapsulated in a class, so I assumed it was some kind of global. It could be that this isn't an actual input/output sample, but rather just one method of a compiled class.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com