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Comment by donbronson | Hacker News Reader

This just shows that the current state of Javascript is a confusing mess. Where do new developers start now when they are been fed ES6 transpilers and ReactJS.

I think Google (as usual) is getting ahead of this problem. But they shouldn't be alone in the fight for clarity.

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If having more options "leads to a confusing mess", I fail to see how having an additional option gets "ahead of this problem."

Having a solution pushed forward by arguably the most influential implementation team is what pushes it forward, not the fact that it's "just another option". Regardless of what Chrome implements (whether it's this, or raw TypeScript, or CofeeScript), the fact that it works directly in V8 is what pushes that solution to the top of the stack.

Ehem, Dart.

It depends on where you're coming from, but for lots of people who want to make something, there's probably some kind of tutorial or library with examples that puts it in reach. Pair that with the fact that JavaScript as a language has a small number of fundamental concepts and a great free REPL and user interface environment (the DOM), and you get lots of people making lots of things that would otherwise be more expensive or less accessible.

> But they shouldn't be alone in the fight for clarity.

They're starting with TypeScript which was Hejlsberg's project at Microsoft. Microsoft wants people to develop web apps for Microsoft server platforms, and you can use TypeScript with intellisense in Visual Studio. We'll see if Microsoft puts it in the browser but it seems like they already have a stake in the success, at least.

Perhaps new developers shouldn't transpile at all, or may use a single transpiler. It certainly could get confusing working with multiple transpilation layers.

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