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cliveb

Agreed, Dart bereft bindings for the main javascript languages as well as no universal JSON serialization of objects for all platforms. Makes me reluctant to recommend it for major SaaS investments. Again at this point Ward Cunningham is using CoffeeScript. However, I do like the Dart community size and tone.

fwaris

Unless the alternative language has bindings for the main javascript frameworks (e.g. jquery, jquerymobile, dojo, d3, etc.) its not very useful. For most modern web development you are reliant on such frameworks as they do a lot of the heavy lifting of handling browser differences, UI, styling / 'theming', data access, etc.

An alternative language that provides such features is F# with WebSharper (http://websharper.com). An entire web IDE (cloudsharper.com) is being developed with this combination - proving its viability.

Andrew Binstock

I did say the "most widely known" options were CS, TS, and Dart. But I agree with your fundamental point, I should have mentioned ClojureScript, even if just in passing. For shame!

Joe.Justesen

What? No mention of ClojureScript? For shame.

markrendle

Regarding TypeScript, the fact that it is essentially JavaScript with extensions means it's much less of a risk when adopting it. The output from TypeScript is so similar to the input - and when ES6 becomes available will be even more so - that if you start a project with it and then change your mind, continuing to work with the plain JavaScript code is hardly any trouble at all.

This is less true of CoffeeScript, although the JavaScript it produces is still pretty idiomatic; it will just look unfamiliar if you switch.

I have no real experience of Dart so I can't comment on that.