I guess I'm lonely in this world, but I really want a statically typed JavaScript alternative. Dart is nice, but no JS interop (yet), GWT is just Java, which is not the most fun thing in the world, ClojureScript is nice, but not static typed and Lisp is a bit too extreme for me, but the new Scala JS DSL seems worth waiting for.
I've been using GWT solidly for the past two years (not my choice for the project, but sometimes you just have to play the hand you are dealt) - and IMO GWT's biggest problem isn't so much that it is Java, but rather that it is Java without any dynamic features (i.e reflection, late binding etc.)
I could rant at length about the dark alleys that GWT's overemphasis on static analysis can take you, just a massive hairball of impenetrable compile-time code generation in order to provide features that would be trivial if you could just reflect on things. Ironic, given the fact that your code is actually running in Javascript.
So while I don't believe static typing is inherently a bad thing, you can definitely have too much.
Actionscript 3 was very good for this. I haven't done Flash development in a couple years, but i've been writing reams of Javascript (mostly backend). While I absolutely enjoy writing JS, I do miss the ability to declare types for methods, variables and parameters, which is incredibly helpful - especially as a project grows.
My IDE (phpStorm) helps quite a bit with this, currently - provided I document everything well - but I wouldn't mind having a compiler to smack me in the face when things are wrong.
Nope, you're definitely not alone on that. I've been thinking about experimenting with doing a simple staticly typed language that transcompiles to a readable JS. Roy [1] is really nice for example, but i think the generated JS is quite bloated, mainly because it maintains the lazy semantics of Haskell.
I have to try Haxe, but I can't help but wonder, it's been around for a while, how come it didn't get more traction? I assume I'll have to try and find out.
I was a flash developer way back (2003), I hear you.
Yes! I actually ended up in both places yesterday before seeing this comment, never thought I'd seriously consider Haskell, but now I start to understand why so many people like it.
