When comparing LiveScript vs PharoJS, the Slant community recommends PharoJS for most people. In the question“What are the best languages that compile to JavaScript? ” PharoJS is ranked 13th while LiveScript is ranked 27th. The most important reason people chose PharoJS is:
For people who enjoy programming in Smalltalk, Pharo allows developers to use Smalltalk for web development as well, since it transpiles Smalltalk code to JavaScript.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Designed for High-level functional code
LiveScript has terse syntax for common functional operations like map, and ships with a library, prelude.ls, with many of the functions most commonly used by functional programmers.
Pro Good amount of programmer flexibility
There's a huge range of features that can make common tasks faster.
Pro ECMA 6 Features
It is the declared goal of LiveScript’s creators to track ECMAScript 6. Hence, the language gives you ECMAScript 6 plus type annotations (which are optional).
LiveScript's module syntax is currently a bit behind the ECMAScript 6 specification (something that will be fixed eventually). It supports two module standards: CJS (Node.js) and AMD (RequireJS).
Pro Fixes coffeescript scoping issues
=
is used to declare variables in the current scope, in order to redeclare variables of outer scope :=
is used. This way bugs are reduced.
Pro Supported by WebStorm and Visual Studio
Pro Program the web in Smalltalk
For people who enjoy programming in Smalltalk, Pharo allows developers to use Smalltalk for web development as well, since it transpiles Smalltalk code to JavaScript.
Pro Support for Phonegap to go directly to iOS/Android mobile App
Pro Compiles to very efficient Javascript, with almost perfect Smalltalk semantics
Pro Great IDE support
Pro Seamless integration with JavaScript libraries
Can directly call to / be called from JavaScript and can use foreign JavaScript objects.
Will soon have ability to generate and use AMD modules.
Cons
Con Strong functional lean
LiveScript is designed to be a high level functional language. For people who prefer a more imperative approach it can be hard to get used to.
Con Compiles to unreadable javascript
JSON.stringify(
each(upCaseName)(
sortBy(function(it){
return it.id;
})(
(function(){
var i$, ref$, len$, ref1$, j$, len1$, ref2$, results$ = [];
for (i$ = 0, len$ = (ref$ = table1).length; i$ < len$; ++i$) {
ref1$ = ref$[i$], id1 = ref1$.id, name = ref1$.name;
for (j$ = 0, len1$ = (ref1$ = table2).length; j$ < len1$; ++j$) {
ref2$ = ref1$[j$], id2 = ref2$.id, age = ref2$.age;
if (id1 === id2) {
results$.push({
id: id1,
name: name,
age: age
});
}
}
}
return results$;
}()))));