Compile to JS or Vanilla JS

[gnehapk]

Compiling to JS means: writing JS in another scripting language (for higher development flexibility and efficiency), then compile them into JavaScript for serving the application.

Compile to JS	Vanilla JS
Higher learning curve, added overhead	No extra learning curve or overhead
More readable code, easy to debug	Less readable code, harder to debug
Generally produces less LoC	Generally produces more LoC
Easier ECMAScript version migration	Harder ECMAScript version migration
Easier discovery of possible errors during compile time	No compilation, hence no preemptive discovery of errors

TypeScript and LiveScript are the two most popular and feature rich superset of JavaScript(i.e. compile to JS). Spared CoffeeScript, as LiveScript does everything CoffeeScript does, but better.

TypeScript	LiveScript
Primarily OO programming style	Primarily functional programming style
Allows static typing (lost on compile)	Dynamic typing, same as JS
Needs TSD to work with JS code	Allows even in-line JS (with <code>)
More lines of codes, in general	Less lines of codes, in general
Imposes conventions	Allows flexibility
Loses information after compiling	Doesn’t lose information after compiling

[debloper]

After some follow up discussion, it appears, using TypeScript is only essential when using along with angular. Please follow #4 for the AngularJS viability discussion.

LiveScript is overall more generic choice, and depending on the modularity and maintainability of code, often essential. However, for the time being, we can keep things manageable within vanilla JS realm, without losing any feature or performance.

If managing JS becomes tough, in future, we can painlessly migrate into any of the aforementioned abstractions, as they're superset of JS anyway. Also, the current set of developers working on this project have common/shared consensus about using JS as well.

[nthomas-redhat]

@debloper so the decision is to use vanilla JS and not TypeScript/LiveScript? Or is it a combination of both

[debloper]

@nthomas-redhat for now, it's a mix of both. New modules will have increasing amount of vanilla JS codes, as new team members are really comfortable with it. At the same time, the existing code is in TS, and will stay as such unless they have to be migrated.

In short, TS works well together with JS, so it's not a choice of either-this-or-that. As we've started with existing codebase, TS will be there for a while, but going forward, we're gonna use vanilla JS as much as possible without breaking anything (and it ideally shouldn't break anything).