[codelikeawolf]

> Let's not go into that for the millionth time

Ok, that's fair. My goal with this question wasn't to open a can of worms. But whenever I see a strong averse reaction to JS, I assume that the person hasn't tried using _modern_ JS.

> why is TS wildly successful

From my perspective, it stops me from making stupid mistakes, improves autocomplete, and adds more explicitness to the code, which is incredibly beneficial for large teams and big projects. But I don't think that answers my original question, because if you strip away the types, it's JS.

> even before that everyone was trying to use anything-but-js

Because JS used to suck a lot more, but it sucks a lot less now.

[tpm]

> why is TS wildly successful

>From my perspective, it stops me from making stupid mistakes, improves autocomplete, and adds more explicitness to the code, which is incredibly beneficial for large teams and big projects. But I don't think that answers my original question, because if you strip away the types, it's JS.

I think it sort of does answer that - if js was not an awful language, there would be no need for TS, even if TS just a band-aid. Even better, if browsers provided a compile target, bytecode/vm spec or whatever instead of a very bad language everyone has to use, we would be spared of close to three decades of evolving tooling that is trying to remedy that bad decision.

[codelikeawolf]

> I think it sort of does answer that - if js was not an awful language, there would be no need for TS.

Eh, I disagree. For me, this statement is the equivalent of saying "if Python was not an awful language, there would be no need for mypy" or "if Ruby was not such an awful language, there would be no need for Sorbet". I don't think mypy or Sorbet improves the underlying languages; they just add some additional DX to prevent those aforementioned stupid mistakes.

I wasn't trying to be disingenuous when I asked what was wrong with JS. You've now referred to it as "awful" and "very bad". I have used other programming languages pretty extensively, and JS seems fine to me. When I asked you why it was bad, you hand-waved it away, saying "let's not go into that for the millionth time". When I see statements like that, I immediately think "oh, so this person is just jumping on the bandwagon without providing objective reasons for why this language is bad". If you think that JS is bad and awful, fine, that's your opinion. But whenever I have a negative opinion on something and I'm presented with compelling evidence to the contrary, I re-evaluate my reasons for why I think it's bad and possibly change my mind.

At the end of the day, if you want to hate on JS and hope for a browser compile target that lets you use any other language than JS to build web apps, that's your prerogative. I was a web dev for almost 10 years, and I've seen the improvements to the language and ecosystem over time. So whenever I encounter the "LoL Js SuCkS" mindset, it grinds my gears a little bit.

[homarp]

> [...] sucks less

so does c, zig, c++, go, rust, python, ruby, php, ada,...

[codelikeawolf]

I'm not sure if this is meant to be snarky or if you're saying that the languages you listed have improved over time. If you're being snarky, you've proven my point by saying several random programming languages are better than JS while providing zero justification.