What are the best solutions to "The JavaScript Problem"?

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38

Options
Considered

490

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Recs.

Jul 25, 2023

Last
Updated

Here’s the Deal

36 Options Considered

Best solutions to "The JavaScript Problem"	Price	Current stable version	Platforms
89 Elm	Free	0.19.1	Windows Linux Mac Web
71 PureScript	-	0.15.4	-
69 Haste	-	-	-
68 Typescript	-	3.7	-
67 Idris	-	-	-

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score 96 · Answer 1

Elm

Top Pro

Clean and elegant

The Elm language is carefully thought out to be as simple and clean as possible while still being very expressive. The end result is that the language itself encourages and often enforces good programming practice. See More

Top Con

Still young

The language is (as of this writing) at version 0.17, so the set of available libraries is still sparse compared to other languages and there are occasional compiler bugs to watch out for (usually solved by a clean rebuild). See More

Håkon Rossebø's Experience

Best developer experience. Very easy to do complex changes to an existing codebase. See More

Specs

Current stable version:0.19.1

Platforms:Windows Linux Mac Web

GZipped size:23.2 kB

Top Pro

Designed around high-level front-end development

As Elm was designed as a front-end langauge, it has out of the box support for things like DOM-element creation, letting programmers focus on their application logic, rather than implementation details specific to the web. See More

Top Con

Lack of typeclasses

Elm doesn't have typeclasses which means some code needs to be duplicated. A fix in a function that needs typeclasses means all of the duplicates need to be fixed too. See More

ConscientiousDerzelas's Experience

Yet another solution, further exacerbating the true problem, which is massive fragmentation See More

Top Pro

Fearless refactoring

Due to Elm's strong type system and friendly/helpful compiler, refactoring is often as easy as making a change in one place and then simply following compiler error messages to see what else needs to be changed. See More

Top Con

Bad documentation

Although language is already 4 years old, syntax and features are still in motion. So there is no good documentation, nor "how-to" examples that are not already outdated. See More

FantasticIshtarDeela's Experience

i love it, this language is excelent and is so fast to create applications with runtime exeptions <3 i secure and easy to learn See More

Top Pro

Growing community

Elm is gaining popularity, somewhat faster than many of the other solutions here. This translates to more code examples, more documentation, and more libraries. See More

Top Con

Missing syntactic sugar ('where' clauses, pattern guards)

Elm is missing a lot of syntactic sugar that Haskellers may consider core, such as 'do' notation, 'where' clauses, pattern guards, and operator sections. See More

jmpavlick's Experience

Elm is fast, conceptually sound, and provides the most pleasant development experience I have ever had in my life. See More

Top Pro

No run-time exceptions

Lack of run-time exceptions makes it easy to produce large swathes of reliable front-end code without drowning in tests. See More

Top Con

FRP is no longer part of Elm

The most "Wow-able" feature of Elm - Functional Reactive Programming (FRP) - is no longer part of Elm. It got removed in version 0.17 (http://elm-lang.org/blog/farewell-to-frp). See More

monk's Experience

I feel very comfortable shipping, adding, refactoring elm code in my application. The compiler is awesome and the runtime code is very reliable. See More

Top Pro

Haskell-like modules

Elm uses easy to use Haskell-like modules. Use: import List import List as L import List exposing (..) import List exposing ( map, foldl ) import Maybe exposing ( Maybe ) import Maybe exposing ( Maybe(..) ) import Maybe exposing ( Maybe(Just) ) Creation: module MyModule where See More

Top Con

Breaking API changes

Migrating an application from 0.18 to 0.19 can be pretty hard due to breaking API changes. On the positive side, though, the language author(s) want to keep the language and the platform clean and concise and don't want to leave any room for dragging old patterns along. But if you have a large codebase then well... You might have to bite the bullet and spend a few days migrating your code. It's just something people should be aware when adopting Elm. See More

OrganizedElpis's Experience

This language will let you write code that is much more stable. Write it once and forget about maintenance See More

Top Pro

Fast HTML rendering

The Elm virtual DOM-based rendering system is very fast. See More

Top Con

No classes and instances

No classes and instances like Haskell has. See More

Alexander T's Experience

It matches expectations. Though it deserves higher community growth. See More

Top Pro

Purely functional language

You get to use a 100% pure functional mind-set. No side effects when calling your functions. See More

Top Con

No higher-kinded types

Top Pro

Static module system

Elm uses easy to use modules. Use: import List import List as L import List exposing (..) import List exposing ( map, foldl ) import Maybe exposing ( Maybe ) import Maybe exposing ( Maybe(..) ) import Maybe exposing ( Maybe(Just) ) Creation: module MyModule exposing (foo, bar) See More

Top Con

Package manager is strictly controlled

If one wants to publish a native package that can handle some things elm simply can't, one would have to persuade the maintainer since package management is strictly under his control. See More

Top Pro

Package manager enforces semantic versioning

The Elm package manager actually checks for API changes between package versions, classifies them as major/minor/patch, and will enforce proper version numbers appropriately. This means that you can safely update from (e.g.) version 3.1 to 3.2 of a package knowing that it won't break backwards compatibility. See More

Top Con

Looses features because they are used "wrong"

Elm's use case is under strict control of the main developer. If things are done he does not deem right he goes as far as removing language features. As has been the case with infix operators or native packages. See More

Top Pro

Easy to code review

The lack of side-effects and simple, consistent language semantics make it easy to quickly review incoming changes. See More

Top Con

Communication with userbase is restricted and often seems to be snippy

Evan the main dev of elm is against roadmaps and announcing what will happen up front. If he answers questions it is often in a bad tone. i.e: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/elm-dev/kNKilHjUYqo/3mTObqyGAgAJ See More

Top Pro

Inferred static typing

ML static typing is great because it's always there, you just choose how explicit you want to be and how much you want the compiler to do. See More

Top Con

Missing some basic operations, like focusing a field

Top Pro

Great and simple way to learn Purely Functional Programming

You can try to apply some functional programming ideas in other languages that have an imperative basis, but you haven't seen the real power unless you tried it in the environment of purely functional programming. Elm is a simple language with great learning resources and easy graphical output, which makes it easy to explore the power of functional programming. Plus programming in Elm is very readable. See More

Top Con

Not quite Haskell semantics

Elm is a strict language, semantically different from Haskell. Elm also borrows a lot from OCaml and F#. While this makes for a nice syntax, it does mean that, for the Haskell programmer, there may be some surprises when it comes to semantics or function names. See More

Top Pro

Good documentation

Elm is gaining popularity, somewhat faster than many of the other solutions here. This translates to more code examples, more documentation, and more libraries. See More

Top Con

Using the JS ecosystem is often tedious to impossible

Since Elm's quasi FFI is very limited it often becomes hard to interoperate with js, most libraries cannot really be used in a full blown elm SPA, those that can often need a lot of adaptercode. See More

Top Pro

Super easy refactoring with very helpful compiler errors

In no other language you can refactor so easy without any worries, since the compiler will guide you through. It is like TDD but than compiler-error driven. See More

Top Con

Huge overhead of code compiled to Javascript

Elm is not for small code injections, project has to be done in Elm alone. See More

Top Pro

Awesome tooling

Elm Auto-completion is available for most editors. With Atom, for example, Elm plugins are available for linting, formatting, make/compiler support, auto-creating case statements, type-aware auto-complete, refactoring tools, and Elmjutsu will simply overflow you with super useful functions, like navigate to a referenced definition and show expression type. Plus the basic compiler messages. See More

Top Pro

High-level Functional-Reactive Code

Build animations, games, and interactions with an incredibly small amount of terse, readable code. See More

Top Pro

Batteries included

The Elm Architecture means you don't need to spend valuable time and effort choosing the right frameworks, state management libraries, or build tooling. It's all built in. See More

Top Pro

Higher confidence in code correctness and quality

Pure functions, immutable data structures, amazing compiler, clean and homologous syntax used for HTML, logic, and optionally to replace CSS, elimination of entire classes of bugs so you don't even need most unit tests. These factors lead to better code, better programs, higher confidence, and ultimately, more satisfaction. See More

Top Pro

Interactive Programming and Hot Swapping

Support for hot swapping and interactive programming is included. See More

Top Pro

Missing Syntactic sugar

Easy to learn, most functions have only one way, not 5 alternatives where you must study where to best use what. See More

Top Pro

Time-travelling debugger for the frontend

See All

score 43 · Answer 2

PureScript

Top Pro

Has Typeclasses and RankNTypes

Top Con

Missing debugging tools

PureScript does not have the concept of breakpoints and the available debugging tools are restricted to console logging and tracing. See More

Specs

Current stable version:0.15.4

Top Pro

High performance FFI code

The Eff monad, which is used for FFI code, optimizes out calls to bind, and supports tail call optimization, resulting in clean, efficient Javascript. The psc compiler also specifically recognizes the ST monad, and transforms scoped variables into mutable Javascript variables, for even more efficient code. See More

Top Con

Error reporting

PureScript error reporting is not so fancy, requiring some effort to understand what's going on. See More

Top Pro

Modules can be compiled to CommonJS

Modules compiled to CommonJS can be included with 'require', making it incredibly simple to call Purescript code from Javascript. See More

Top Con

Not widely used

Top Pro

Thorough documentation

The Purescript website has fairly thorough documentation for all of the language's features, and the Purescript blog contains several examples of practical usage, and Pursuit contains the reference documentation. See More

Top Con

Lots of dependencies needed to get started

PureScript is written in Haskell, but meant to be used with Node.js. As a result, to get started, users must install Node.js (the PureScript compiler itself can be installed via NPM). In addition, PureScript has different semantics from Haskell, and so even after installing, there's still some overhead to getting productive with PureScript. See More

Top Pro

Multiple (experimental) compilation targets

Experimental backends exist for C++11 (pure11), Lua, Python and the JVM, and PureScript has been used successfully on iOS and Android (via React Native) and AWS Lambda. See More

Top Con

Restrictive FFI

Functions exported are all curried, and must be called as such from Javascript. The FFI syntax for importing Javascript functions, while slightly simpler and more readable than UHC/Fay's, means that calls to methods on objects must be wrapped to pass the object explicitly as a parameter. See More

Top Pro

Has row polymorphism and extensible effects

Top Pro

Pure functional language

You cannot have side effects, unless a function is explicitly defined as so. See More

Top Pro

Awesome web frameworks

Thermite (React) Halogen (VDOM, similar to ELM) Deku (featuring pursx, JSX like alternative) And hit these up with Signals, Isolated/(Managed?) Components, powerful functions and FFI See More

Top Pro

Type safety

Compiling should be your first unit test. A tight type system (static and hopefully strong) will catch many logic errors that are often difficult to spot through debugging. In languages like PureScript, if it compiles, it often runs properly. See More

Top Pro

FFI

FFI system is quite good and easy to use. You can import functions curried or not curried. Records and arrays use native JS objects and arrays. See More

Top Pro

Higher kinded types

Has Typeclasses and RankNTypes. See More

See All

score 15 · Answer 3

Haste

Top Pro

Client and Server as the same application

Haste was designed to allow both the client and server to be written as parts of the same, type-safe application. This is in stark contrast to most other options, where the client and server are considered two separate entities, resulting in extra manual validation code and more chances for type errors. See More

Top Con

Not widely used

Top Pro

Almost full power of Haskell

Haste supports most all of Haskell except for Template Haskell, including even most GHC extensions. See More

Top Con

Lacks some minor Haskell functionality

Lacks support for Template Haskell. See More

Top Pro

Generates small, reasonably performant code

Top Pro

Automatic, type safe program slicing

Haste lets you write client and server as a single program, automatically generating code for the server as well as the client, giving you full type safety even across the Internet. See More

See All

score 45 · Answer 4

Typescript

Top Pro

Supports explicit typing

Top Con

Syntax is too verbose

AffableRuaumoko's Experience

Not a language..., is just a tool which must work in background, yet it pollutes your source code logic. Is not necessary.. not much benefits to JavaScript, Won't work in JS... Removed at build time... in development, IDE + LS + Ai runtime in background can do better . If you visualize code execution process in your mind , TS will disrupt it... less creativity. See More

Specs

Current stable version:3.7

IDE Support:Very good

Top Pro

Acts as a transpiler for ES2015/16 features

Top Con

Less Creativity... If you visualize code execution process in your mind , TS will disrupt it...

WittyBanebdjedet's Experience

Have used it in a live project and seen the benefits. Developers found it easy to learn and use, and code was more maintainable. See More

Top Pro

Compiles to plain Javascript

Every existing Javascript program is already a valid TypeScript program giving it the best support for existing libraries, which is particularly useful if you need to integrate with an existing Javascript code base. See More

Top Con

Removed at build time... so in development, IDE + LS + Ai runtime in background can do better .

Top Pro

Actually used by large projects in the real world

For instance, Angular 2 is written entirely in Typescript. See More

Top Con

Is not necessary.. won't work in JS easily, unless you use JS Docs which pollutes code.

the claimed maintainability only applies when a simple/careless developer can't visualize, read and write code correctly, and mess up the code. choose better Devs, in interview ask them to visualize and describe your code. problem solved. See More

Top Pro

Can incrementally convert codebase to Typescript

Top Con

Not a language..., is just a tool which must work in background, yet it pollutes your source code logic.

Top Pro

Optional static typing

Typescript has optional static typing with support for interfaces and generics, and intelligent type inference. It makes refactoring large codebases a breeze, and provides many more safeguards for creating stable code. See More

Top Con

Awful error messages

Comparing to Elm or Rust for example, TypeScript's error messages won't say you very much. For example if you change method of interface which your class implements it won't say your class have incorrect implementation. Instead it'll show error in usage of instances of class. In some cases it can spoil hours of your work trying to figure out why your parameters are incorrect. See More

Top Pro

Closely tracks ECMAScript standards

Top Con

Less functional

Not too many functional feature when compared to Elm or ClojureScript. See More

Top Pro

Easy to learn for JS/C#/Java Developers

Top Con

Type inference coverage is incomplete

The default type when declaring and using a variable is any. For example, the following should break but does not: function add(a:number) { return a + 1 } function addAB(a, b) {return add(a) + b} addAB("this should break but doesn't :(", 100) In order to avoid this, you have to declare type signatures for every variable or parameter or set the flag --noImplicityAny when running the compiler. See More

Top Pro

Polyfill for ES6 fat-arrow syntax

Typescript implements the fat arrow syntax, which always maintains the current context for this and is a shorter/more convenient syntax than traditional function definition. See More

Top Con

No option to declare that a function throws errors

Top Pro

Has a repository of high quality TypeScript type definitions for popular libraries

There are many ready to use and high quality TypeScript definitions for popular libraries including jquery, angular, bootstrap, d3, lodash and many-many more. See More

Top Con

Too similar to Javascript

Presents some advantages compared to Javascript, but because it is designed to be a superset of Javascript, it means all the bad parts of Javascript are still present. See More

Top Pro

Low number of logical errors brought in by built-in type annotations

TypeScript's built-in type signatures allow developers to fully document interfaces and make sure that they will be correctly compiled. Therefore, cutting down on logical errors. See More

Top Pro

Strong typed language

Lots of benefits of it, you can read this. See More

Top Pro

Works well with existing Javascript code

Can both call Javascript code and be called by Javascript code, making transitioning to the language very easy. See More

Top Pro

Great support for editors (Sublime, Code, Vim, IntelliJ...)

Top Pro

Strict superset of Javascript

Every existing Javascript program is already a valid TypeScript program giving it the best support for existing libraries, which is particularly useful if you need to integrate with an existing Javascript code base. See More

Top Pro

Built and supported by Microsoft

Being built by Microsoft, TypeScript is much more likely than most other similar open-source projects to receive continued long-term support, good documentation, and a steady stream of development. See More

Top Pro

Great support for React, integrated typed JSX parsing

Strongly typed react components, so UI "templating" automatically gains type safety. See More

Top Pro

Adds support for object-oriented programming

Typescript enables familiar object-oriented programming patterns: classes, inheritance, public/private methods and properties, et cetera. See More

Top Pro

Clear roadmap

TypeScript has a clear and defined roadmap with rapid and constant releases. See More

Top Pro

Compiles to very native looking code

Compiles to simple looking Javascript making it easy to understand what is happening and learn the language (if you already know Javascript). See More

Top Pro

First party Visual Studio support

As a Microsoft developed project, it has first party Visual Studio support that's on par with its C# support with features like syntax sensitive statement completion. See More

Top Pro

Works well with Angular 2

Angular 2 is built using TypeScript and applications built using it can make use of that (or not). See More

Top Pro

Ability to do functional programming

See All

score 20 · Answer 5

Idris

Top Pro

Full dependent types

Idris not only has support for type classes, but is a fully dependently typed language, giving you the full power to statically verify your code. See More

Top Con

Not widely used

Top Pro

Domain driven design and type driven development

Because of full dependent types in Idris, the programmer can focus more on modelling the domain with types and waste less time fixing common bugs that the type checker will catch. Dependent types help apply type driven development and a lot of code auto generation, making the compiler and type checker an ally in developing working software instead of just getting in the way. See More

Top Con

Not widely used

Top Con

Weaker type inference

As type inference is undecidable for dependently-typed languages, Idris cannot offer the full type inference that Haskell supports, and so more type annotations will be needed. See More

Top Con

Different semantics from Haskell

Idris, while similar to Haskell, has strict semantics, which may cause some confusion if your backend is done in Haskell. If using Idris, it would make sense to do the backend in Idris as well, if not for the fact that Idris currently has fewer libraries available for web development than Haskell. See More

See All

score 13 · Answer 6

ClojureScript

Top Pro

Immutable persistent datastructures

When DOM is represented with immutable, persistent datastructures, rendering/re-rendering becomes highly optimized (e.g. React.JS, which borrowed ideas from Clojurescript/OM/Reagent). See More

Top Con

Dynamic types

But specs are starting to compensate for this. See More

Specs

Current stable version:1.9

GZipped size:32 kB

Top Pro

Pragmatic functional programming

Emphasizes the clarity of functional programming while allowing concessions where necessary to best capture a problem (see STM state management). See More

Top Pro

Excellent tools for web development

ClojureScript has superb wrappers around React.js (see Reagent) that make building single-page apps a breeze. With figwheel, it's a web dev experience unlike any other -- hotloaded code, repl interaction, and instantly reflected changes make good development fun and fast. You can add things like Garden to make CSS-writing part of the same holistic experience and suddenly all development is a pleasant, smooth process. See More

Top Pro

Homoiconicity

Code is data and data is easily and directly representable in code. See More

Top Pro

Macros

Top Pro

Pervasive lazy sequences

Top Pro

STM for deliberate management of state

Software Transactional Model causes global state to be possible but clean, managed in a way like SQL databases with ACID guarantees. See More

Top Pro

Live interactive programming with figwheel

Figwheel builds your ClojureScript code and hot loads it into the browser as you are coding! Every time you save your ClojureScript source file, the changes are sent to the browser so that you can see the effects of modifying your code in real time. See More

Top Pro

Namespacing emphasized

Namespacing is emphasized, something google itself saw as a crucial absence in Javascript. All forms of clojure place a heavy emphasis on the value of namespacing. See More

Top Pro

Share application logic between browser and Clojure server

Clojure is also able to run web servers, so one can reap similar benefits to NodeJS in terms of sharing code between client and server. See More

Top Pro

Targets Google Closure-ready JavaScript for immense optimizations

Google's Closure Library converts regular JavaScript into a highly optimized form - including dead code analysis/elimination. It can even remove pieces of unused code from 3rd party libraries (eg, if you import jQuery but only use one function, Google Closure includes only that piece). See More

Top Pro

Easy to use existing JavaScript libraries

Clojure and ClojureScript are designed to be able to interact with their host. So the language by design makes it is easy to use existing JS libraries. See More

Top Pro

Simple syntax

Lispness makes ClojureScript trivial to comprehend after an initial learning overhead. See More

Top Pro

Can be used with React out of the box

Top Pro

The Spec core library

From the creator of Clojure: Spec is a new core library (Clojure 1.9 and Clojurescript) to support data and function specifications in Clojure. Writing a spec should enable automatic: Validation, Error reporting, Destructuring, Instrumentation, Test-data generation and Generative test generation. See More

Top Pro

Dynamic Types

The dynamic typing allows coffee to be written quickly and, as necessary, dispatched on the actual properties of the data (see the Spec pro). This is excellent way to deal with the JSON problem because you can easily consider the shape of the data you're working with, without the overhead of a system-wide type system. See More

Top Pro

Excellent build tools

Both Leiningen and Boot are great build tools that manage code dependencies and deployment. See More

See All

score 21 · Answer 7

Reason ML

Top Pro

Uses the excellent Bucklescript Ocaml to Javascript transpiler

Top Con

A standard async syntax is pending

Async syntax is not standard across native/js projects and in both cases a bit awkward for non-ocaml devs. Currently this is reasonml most voted issue in their GitHub repo so hopefully, there's news soon. See More

Benjamin San Souci's Experience

Reason has been an amazing coding experience so far. It’s made me a better programmer. See More

Specs

Version:3.6.0

Top Pro

Has built-in support for React

React components in ReasonML even have a reducer element that can eliminate the need for redux. See More

Top Pro

Aims to make the transition from Javascript easier

Despite being a completely different language Javascript programmer will find that the syntax of ReasonML has many familiarities with Javascript. See More

Top Pro

Immutability with escape hatches

Reason includes true immutability, but it has escape hatches to let you use mutations in exceptional cases. See More

Top Pro

Compiles to JavaScript or assembly (ocaml)

The same reasonml code can compile to js (eg. run on browsers or node.js, use any lib in npm), or compile to assembly through ocaml (unless of course you load js externals), running on any device, with C-comparable (or better) performance. See More

Top Pro

Backed by Facebook

Top Pro

JSX syntax natively supported

Reason was created by the creator of React, for developers already using JSX to template web or native UIs this is very familiar. See More

Top Pro

Uses established compiler technology from Ocaml with a tweaked syntax that leans more towards Javascript

See All

score 14 · Answer 8

GHCJS

Top Con

Large runtime

GHCJS supports the entire Haskell runtime, the Javascript it outputs tends to be quite large. This is in contrast to options such as Fay, which save some overhead by not supporting some features such as multi-threading. See More

Top Pro

Full Stack Code Sharing

With a Haskell backend, GHCJS enables code sharing. In combination with the power of Haskell as a language, this enables an extremely tight integration of the client side with the server side, where all the communications take place in a type-safe manner and even transparently if desired. See More

Top Pro

All of Haskell, with the same tools you're used to

No need to learn new syntax or semantics, and no need to install and learn a bunch of new tools - it's just GHC. See More

Top Pro

Mature language and community

Top Pro

Terse

Haskell is a very terse language, particularly due to its type inference. This means there's nothing to distract from the intent of the code, making it very readable. This is in sharp contrast to languages like Java, where skimming code requires learning which details can be ignored. Haskell's terseness also lends itself to very clear inline examples in textbooks, and makes it a pleasure to read through code even on a cellphone screen. See More

Top Pro

Quick Feedback

It's often said that, in Haskell, if it compiles, it works. This short feedback loop can speed up learning process, by making it clear exactly when and where mistakes are made. See More

See All

score 9 · Answer 9

Haxe

Top Pro

Outputs efficient Javascript

Superior typed language. See More

Top Con

Lack of learning resources

Haxe is only for people who already know ActionScript and have followed the project from the beginning. All the textbooks are out of date, as is the official documentation. There's no way to bring in new team members. Nov./2018 : This must be a very outdated CON, notable efforts have been made to make it more accessible. Some level of programming know-how is required to enter Haxe development, such is true. https://haxe.org/videos/ See More

Specs

Platforms:Web, iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows, OSX, Linux

Supported languages:C++, C#, Java, Javascript, PHP, Lua, Python, Actionscript

Top Pro

More language and compiler features, such as powerful macros

Top Pro

Can also compile to C++, PHP, Python, Lua, Java

Top Pro

Syntactic macros

Syntactic macros allow you to extend compiler features at the syntax tree step. Macros come into play after code is parsed into the abstract syntax tree, and macros allow you to transform it before the rest of the compilation completes. This provides for immense power, while at the same time scoping the extensibility at a level that is powerful, but well constrained. See More

See All

score 61 · Answer 10

Dart

Top Pro

Easy to learn when coming from Java or Javascript

Dart syntax compared to Java, JavaScript, Python, and C#. See More

Top Con

Dart Dev Compiler is at a very early stage today after 33 months of the development

Very sought-after tool which (for reasons unknown) is not ready for real use. Despite the fact that it is developed by the professionals from Google on a reimbursable basis. See More

MagicalAmaArhus's Experience

Just works !!! Great docs, and community. See More

Specs

Current stable version:2.1.0

IDE Support:Good quality IDE plugins for Jetbrains IDEs and Visual Studio Code

Standard:ECMA

Top Pro

Easy to architecture and design large web/server applications

Dart contains all the wanted features to design and architecture large application as class, inheritance, interface, type. See More

Top Con

Community isn't very healthy

One or so posts a day on the mailing list; 800ish github stars vs Purescript's 2800 and elm's 3190. Not a lot of developer impetus. See More

FantasticIshtarDeela's Experience

I love it!! is easy to learn, easy to code review, fast to create applications, fast to find problems and minify code problems, the compile is beautiful See More

Top Pro

Good dependency management

Easy dependency management using pub. See More

Top Con

Small community, little momentum

Top Pro

Better static analysis

Makes IDEs more effective, and finding bugs easier. See More

Top Con

Large overhead of code compiled to Javascript

That makes it not suitable for small code injections or standalone webpages. Typically whole project has to be done in Dart. See More

Top Pro

Fast development cycle, no compilation needed

Thanks to Dartium, a browser running the dart VM, you can run dart code directly without compilation. See More

Top Con

Lack of libraries

In comparison to Java and/or Javascript the amount of libraries is very small. See More

Top Pro

Robust and comprehensive core library

Top Con

No backwards compatibility with JavaScript

Even though you can use some JavaScript libraries together with Dart, it is not possible to execute JavaScript code in DartVM. This means JavaScript libraries would need to be refactored from scratch. See More

Top Pro

Worry-free, easy code refactoring

Dart's optionally typed language combined with the Dart sdk plugin for most modern IDEs makes refactoring easy! Make a change in one place and then just check out any error messages to see what else needs to be changed. See More

Top Con

Not different enough from JavaScript to be worth the learning curve

While it's goals are noble to fix browser APIs it's feels like it's just JavaScript with types and the browser APIs moved all over. See More

Top Pro

Has healthy and strong, and even active, community

Dart community is healthy and strong, not very big compared to JavaScript's but sometimes active. See More

Top Con

No operator function overloading

Using the same operator with different argument types is not possible. See More

Top Pro

Multiplatform : web, server, script, mobile (see flutter.io)

Top Pro

Great async language support

Dart is a single threaded programming language. So if any piece of code blocks the execution of the program, the program practically freezes. To avoid this Dart makes use of asynchronous operations which let your program run without getting blocked. This is done through Future objects. A Future is an object which represent a means for getting a value at a certain point in the future. A function may invoke a Future and when that happens, two outcomes can be achieved: The function is unable to return a value, so it queues up work to be done and returns an uncompleted Future object. Or later when a value is available to be returned, the Future object completes with that value. See More

Top Pro

Transpiled JavaScript code works on all browsers

In Dart many browser differences (subtle differences and also missing features) are abstracted away or polyfilled. When Dart is transpiled to JS the output works on all supported browsers. There is usually no need to load polyfills or to consider browser differences during development. No need for libraries like jQuery to make the same code work the same on all browsers. See More

Top Pro

Easy prototyping

Dart has an optional type system which makes Dart a great language for prototyping. It encourages developers to gradually evolve their programs without worrying about types first. See More

Top Pro

Can compile to efficient machine code

Dart was designed to be as expressive as possible. Ahead-of-time compilers can compile Dart code to efficient machine code. This is especially important when deploying to mobile where you don't want (or can't) use a JIT. See More

Top Pro

Actively developed and maintained

Dart is actively developed and maintained by Google and used by the company, ensuring good project health (even if their plans for the language have changed slightly). See More

Top Pro

Many platform targets

Dart targets the browser (after it's transpiled to JS), the server (Dart's VM can be run on Linux, Windows, OSX (Both on Intel and ARM architectures), Android and iOS (work in progress) and embedded systems via Dartino (support is experimental). See More

Top Pro

A very clear well thought standard library

Out of the box, the developer gets core libraries to help with async, collections, strings, regexps, conversions, formats, file I/O, math, typed data, and more. This reduces the need to pull in various 3rd-party utilities and ensures that all Dart code looks and feels the same. See More

Top Pro

A lot of tools are available to help in developing with Dart

Dart has a lot of tools available which help with developing Dart applications. Some examples of those tools include: pub - package and dependency management and build tool analyzer - static syntax analysis with linter, quick fixes, autocompletion support for easy IDE integration test - powerful and flexible testing framework and test runner dev_compiler - generate reusable JS instead of tree-shaken minified JS output (work in progress) dartfmt_ - source code formatter server-side VM observatory - a powerful tool for profiling and debugging running Dart code (for Dartium and Dart server code) See More

Top Pro

No compile time in development

Dartium (Chromium derivative) is a browser with integrated Dart VM, which allows you to run and debug native Dart code during development for short edit-reload cycles. Only for testing on other browsers and deployment is transpiling to JS necessary. See More

Top Pro

Great standard library

Dart includes a truly comprehensive core library, making it unnecessary to include disparate, external resources for basic functionalities Other than reducing the need to pull in various 3rd-party utilities this also ensures that all Dart code looks and feels the same. Out of the box, the developer gets core libraries to help with: async, collections, strings, regexps, conversions, formats, file I/O, math, typed data, and more. See More

Top Pro

AngularDart 2.0 support

Top Pro

Will be familiar to Java developers

The language will look familiar to Java developers, easing the learning curve. And yet, while it's similar, it has some nice syntax facilities to avoid common boilerplate code found in Java. Code is terser, yet readable. See More

Top Pro

Angular 2 as native framework

See All

score 4 · Answer 11

Fay

Top Con

No typeclasses

This can cause some overhead. See More

Top Pro

Small output

Fay produces smaller output than pure Haskell compilers such as GHCJS; It does not need to include the whole Haskell runtime, as it drops support for features such as multi-threading, giving it fewer dependencies. See More

Top Pro

Simple, flexible, hackable FFI

As with UHC, the FFI to Javascript works with printf-style format: max = ffi "Math.round(%1,%2)" This can simplify code needed to make calls to methods on objects, in contrast to e.g., Purescript's FFI, which requires that methods be wrapped in Javascript. Similarly to UHC, Fay also supports the use of %*, for javascript functions with arbitrary numbers of parameters, such as concat, though they must expose an explicit number of parameters to Fay. See More

Top Pro

Easy to set up, with packages available on Cabal

Fay is available on Cabal, as are Fay packages, so getting up and running is as simple as typing 'cabal install'. Happstack, Snap, and Yesod packages are available on Hackage, as are bindings for JQuery and Backbone. See More

Top Pro

Subset of Haskell - nothing new to learn

Since Fay is a subset of Haskell - Lazy, statically typed, and pure by default. There's no new syntax to learn, and no surprises when it comes to the semantics of your code. This extends into function names as well - Fay programmers can use familiar functions such as putStrLn to output to the console, rather than Javascript-specific versions. See More

See All

score 16 · Answer 12

Ceylon

Top Pro

Write server side and client side in the same language

Ceylon compiles to multiple backends: JavaScript, the Java Virtual Machine, and hopefully soon Dart as well. This allows you to write server-side and client-side code in the same language, reusing code between the two sides as appropriate. See More

Specs

Current stable version:1.3.2

Top Pro

Good IDE support, fast compiler

Ceylon has its own SDK compiled to JS so it's really multi-platform. See More

Top Pro

A great module system that interoperates with npm

Modularity is integrated into the language and tooling. See More

Top Pro

Interoperation with native JavaScript

Even though it's primarily a statically-typed language, Ceylon has special language-level support for interoperation with dynamically typed languages like JavaScript. See More

See All

score 5 · Answer 13

F# Fable

Top Pro

Interacts seamlessly with other JavaScript libraries

ExpertMorpheus's Experience

If you like Elm, you are going to LOVE F# with Fable. F# with Fable is actually a better solution than Elm in pretty much every way. The language is mature and stable, and the Javascript Fable produces is beautiful enough to be proud of. F# and Fable work with all the important, modern JavaScript libraries... and when Web Assembly moves to center stage, your F# skills are perfectly portable. See More

Specs

Current stable version:2.4.22

IDE Support:Yes

License:MIT

Site:https://fable.io/

See All Specs

Top Pro

Works in normal flow with webpack and babel

Top Pro

Works directly on F# source code

No compilation to .NET bytecode needed. See More

Top Pro

It is mature and proven

Not vaporware or a 0.x version. See More

Top Pro

Works directly on F# source code, no compilation to .NET bytecode needed

See All

score 12 · Answer 14

Scala.js

Top Pro

Implements a mature language

In contrast to other options, Scala.js is a compiler plugin for an already existing and mature language: Scala. As such, it benefits automatically from the existing compiler, from the language design choices made for Scala, which exists and is established in the industry since years. See More

Top Con

Always one File result

You produce one big file that is hard to split to smaller one (this is one of core decisions that gives you a lot of opportunities but it cannot be changed in future). If You starts with it, you ends up with one file. See More

Specs

Current stable version:1.13.1

Top Pro

Easy, type-safe, interop with JavaScript

The JavaScript-interop of Scala.js is very direct and lightweight. See More

Top Con

A complex language with a lot of incidental complexity that results in significant mental overhead

Top Pro

Crossbuilding

Keeps your client and server sources in sync. See More

Top Con

Can be intimidating for beginners

Scala is an industrial language. It brings functional programming to the JVM. All books/tutorials cover friendly aspects of Scala, but there are corners of the language that one can wander into that are not friendly to beginners. See More

Top Pro

Excellent tooling (IDE) support

The same good and mature tooling that can be used for Scala can be used for Scala.js out of the box (code-completion, refactoring, immediate feedback, etc.). See More

Top Pro

Extensive standard libraries

Scala.js implements most of the Scala standard library and many parts of the Java one. Among others, it supports Scala's rich collection library. See More

Top Pro

Type inference

Scala offers type inference, which, while giving the same safety as Java's type system, allows programmers to focus on the code itself, rather than on updating type annotations. See More

Top Pro

Immutable values

The immutable values make it perfect for working with concurrency. See More

Top Pro

The strength of Scala on the server

The strength of Scala (JVM) on the server can not be underestimated, and is probably superior to any other choice listed here (where applicable; many have no server-side equivalent). Being able to use such a powerful language (and ecosystem) on the server AND on the client, and sharing code between the two, is a big advantage. See More

Top Pro

Multiparadigm

Scala supports both Functional and Object Oriented styles of programming. Beginners can learn both paradigms without having to learn a new language, and experts can switch between the two according to what best suits their needs at the time. See More

Top Pro

Dead-code elimination

Scala.js performs dead-code elimination out of the box (when running in the "fullOpts" mode). See More

Top Pro

Incremental compilation

Through SBT, Scala.js supports incremental compilation out of the box. That is: SBT automatically picks-up the changes (think "watch" in other tools) and only recompiles what is needed. This makes the development cycle fast and very pleasant to work with. See More

Top Pro

Simple build system compared to Javascript

While SBT is arguably not as simple as Maven, it beats the chaos of the JavaScript build ecosystem. See More

Top Pro

Macros

Because Scala.js is a plugin to the Scala compiler, the whole power of the Scala language is available at compile-time. Which includes macros. Very expressive things can be done, in a type-safe way, which are difficult or impossible in other languages. See More

See All

score 2 · Answer 15

Utrecht Haskell Compiler

Top Con

No support for Language Extensions

No support for things like Arrow Syntax - this is particularly a disadvantage when compared to options like Elm (which was designed around good syntax for Arrowized FRP), if you're looking to do Functional Reactive front-end development. See More

Top Pro

It's just Haskell

No need to learn any new semantics, it's just a switch to a different compiler. See More

Top Pro

Flexible FFI

UHC uses a printf-like syntax for its FFI, which is flexible enough to minimize the need for wrapper functions, when, e.g., calling methods on objects. It also supports %*, for working with functions that take arbitrary parameters, such as concat. UHC also has support for wrapper imports and dynamic imports, for passing Haskell functions as callbacks to Javascript, or dealing with curried Javascript functions, respectively. See More

See All

score 1 · Answer 16

PharoJS

Top Con

Limited community

There's limited community, because of being a fairly recent solution: it's currently in Beta. See More

Top Pro

Interoperates with native Javascript code

Naturally access Javascript object fields and call function/methods See More

Top Pro

Implements almost full Smalltalk

Limitations: Limited numeric stack No become: Strings/Symbols/Characters all strings Limited reflection support See More

Top Pro

Develop/debug/refactor in Pharo with rich IDE and seamlessly deploy in Javascript

Virtually any Smalltalk class can be exported as part of the solution. Code running in Pharo can access the Javascript/DOM environment and then move over once all is functioning. The only non-portable code are primitive methods without Smalltalk fallback code, but those are mostly already implemented. See More

Top Pro

Interactive development for multiple browsers plus NodeJS

See All

score 5 · Answer 17

CoffeeScript

Top Pro

Clean, concise syntax

Code in CoffeeScript is much cleaner than in ES5, and new ES6+ features didn't change that, even though ES6 imported some ideas of CoffeeScript. See More

Top Con

Codebase is barely actively maintained anymore

Specs

Current stable version:2.3.2

License:MIT

Top Pro

Compiles to readable Javascript

Resulting JS code size is comparable to CoffeeScript, overhead is tiny. See More

Top Con

Codebase is barely actively maintained anymore

Top Pro

Supports new ES6+ features

Even though CoffeeScript originally was aiming compilation of all it's fanciness into strict ES3, it supports ES6+ generators and modules. See More

Top Con

Terse syntax can lead to ambiguity

It can sometimes be hard to be sure of what CoffeeScript will compile down to because of the optional parentheses and significant white spacing. Over multiple lines the same statement can be written in many different ways, and it's not always clear what the intended interpretation is. For example: foo bar and hello world can compile to either: foo(bar) && hello(world) foo(bar && hello(world)) See More

Top Pro

Everything is an expression

Even for loops and if statements. For example, to get mapped array, you don't have to use any Array methods, just the language features: food = ( stuff for stuff in fridge when stuff.isEatable() ) See More

Top Con

Initializing a variable and assigning it are essentially the same thing

Because of how variables are initialized and reassigned in CoffeeScript, it becomes very easy to accidentally overwrite a variable as the codebase increases. As complexity increases, the only way to safely create a variable is by pressing Ctrl + F and by examining the current file to ensure that there's no conflict. See More

Top Pro

Off-side rule

Blocks are defined by their indentation, similar to Python. See More

Top Con

Not better enough, too many gotchas

Top Pro

Lightweight syntax

Javascript is a very verbose language so CoffeeScript's goal is to lighten it to make it less tedious. Various design choices are built around making CoffeeScript more terse with things like optional parenthesis in function calls, cleaner function declarations, no curly braces, and significant white space. Because Javascript can get pretty deeply nested at times, having a lightweight syntax helps with readability. The result is a language with a minimalistic syntax with lots of syntax sugar. See More

Top Con

Weak typing, as in JS

Although CoffeeScript introduces classes, all types are weak, as in JS. See More

Top Pro

Syntax for humans, not compilers.

CoffeeScript adds syntax that is not only more terse than javascript, smoothing over the rough edges, but also enforces a more human readable syntax to the point where a non-programmer can understand some logic. Many programmers that are not use to coffeescripts syntax will find it foreign if they don't read the single page API, but generally it is quick to understand and although self documenting code is a myth coffeescript is definitely very close. if hungry then eat food for food in fridge when food isnt poison and it isnt bedtime Seems a lot more concise and comprehensible to many programmers and most others than the alternative syntax: var food, i, len; if (hungry) { for (i = 0, len = fridge.length; i < len; i++) { food = fridge[i]; if (food !== poison && it !== bedtime) { eat(food); } } } See More

Top Pro

It's just JavaScript

The golden rule of CoffeeScript is: "It's just JavaScript". The code compiles one-to-one into the equivalent JS, and there is no interpretation at runtime. You can use any existing JavaScript library seamlessly from CoffeeScript (and vice-versa). The compiled output is readable and pretty-printed, passes through JavaScript Lint without warnings, will work in every JavaScript runtime, and tends to run as fast or faster than the equivalent handwritten JavaScript. See More

Top Pro

Maintainable code

Easy to read and easy to work with structures like list. See More

Top Pro

Significant whitespace

Having indention-based code blocks is particularly helpful in JavaScript because of its functional callback based nature. In JavaScript you find yourself writing functions within object and passing functions to functions. You can find statements ending with a confusing melange of braces like )}})}). With significant whitespace, most of the needs for braces go away. See More

Top Pro

Introduces classes and class inheritance

The most disputable missing feature of Javascript is lack of classes. CoffeeScript solves the issue. See More

See All

score 2 · Answer 18

Vue.js

Top Pro

Easily adoptable

Top Con

Poor typescript support

Very basic typescript support. See More

Specs

GZipped size:~30KB

Repository:https://github.com/vuejs/vue

See All

score 2 · Answer 19

Blazor

Top Pro

JavaScript interop

Call JavaScript APIs and libraries. See More

Anna Jones's Experience

CFS is one of the greatest platforms for the solutions manual. Crazy For Study provides the best online textbook solutions manual, online assignment help, online homework help, test preparation, test bank solutions manual. This service is available 24*7. Just grab your solutions by using CrazyForStudy See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac

Top Pro

Use existing .NET libraries

Allows to use .NET Standard libraries. See More

RickZeeland's Experience

Allows using C# instead of Javascript to develop Client and Server side applications. See More

Top Pro

Free and open source

See All

score 11 · Answer 20

What problem?

Top Con

Denial can be risky

Denial is a psychological defense mechanism in which confrontation with a problem or with a reality is avoided by denying the existence of the problem or reality. Refusing to acknowledge the fact that javascript is a dysfunctional language puts developers at risk of wasting time and resources on non scalable and non maintainable projects. See More

PrivatePanacea's Experience

This post fails to explain WTF "the Javascript problem" is. It ought to be buried until it has a proper description. See More

36 Options Considered

My Recommendation for Elm

My Recommendation for Elm

Clean and elegant

Still young

Designed around high-level front-end development

Lack of typeclasses

Fearless refactoring

Bad documentation

Growing community

Missing syntactic sugar ('where' clauses, pattern guards)

No run-time exceptions

FRP is no longer part of Elm

Haskell-like modules

Breaking API changes

Fast HTML rendering

No classes and instances

Purely functional language

No higher-kinded types

Static module system

Package manager is strictly controlled

Package manager enforces semantic versioning

Looses features because they are used "wrong"

Easy to code review

Communication with userbase is restricted and often seems to be snippy

Inferred static typing

Missing some basic operations, like focusing a field

Great and simple way to learn Purely Functional Programming

Not quite Haskell semantics

Good documentation

Using the JS ecosystem is often tedious to impossible

Super easy refactoring with very helpful compiler errors

Huge overhead of code compiled to Javascript

Awesome tooling

High-level Functional-Reactive Code

Batteries included

Higher confidence in code correctness and quality

Interactive Programming and Hot Swapping

Missing Syntactic sugar

Time-travelling debugger for the frontend

My Recommendation for PureScript

My Recommendation for PureScript

Has Typeclasses and RankNTypes

Missing debugging tools

High performance FFI code

Error reporting

Modules can be compiled to CommonJS

Not widely used

Thorough documentation

Lots of dependencies needed to get started

Multiple (experimental) compilation targets

Restrictive FFI

Has row polymorphism and extensible effects

Pure functional language

Awesome web frameworks

Type safety

FFI

Higher kinded types

My Recommendation for Haste

My Recommendation for Haste

Client and Server as the same application

Not widely used

Almost full power of Haskell

Lacks some minor Haskell functionality

Generates small, reasonably performant code

Automatic, type safe program slicing

My Recommendation for Typescript

My Recommendation for Typescript

Supports explicit typing

Syntax is too verbose

Acts as a transpiler for ES2015/16 features

Less Creativity... If you visualize code execution process in your mind , TS will disrupt it...

Compiles to plain Javascript

Removed at build time... so in development, IDE + LS + Ai runtime in background can do better .

Actually used by large projects in the real world

Is not necessary.. won't work in JS easily, unless you use JS Docs which pollutes code.

Can incrementally convert codebase to Typescript

Not a language..., is just a tool which must work in background, yet it pollutes your source code logic.

Optional static typing

Awful error messages