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Why Spider?
There are many languages that compile to JavaScript. The most popular ones are CoffeeScript, TypeScript and Dart.
But all of them have problems:
- CoffeeScript (and its derivatives: LiveScript, Coco, etc) have serious issues of ambiguous code, alien syntax (foo 1 compiles to foo(1);, but foo compiles to foo;) and scoping problems.
- TypeScript (and AtScript) are supersets of JavaScript, so they inherit all of its problems. Additionally, loose typing can be one of JavaScript's best features if used correctly.
- Dart is an extreme departure from JavaScript, which makes it impossible to interact with JavaScript libraries directly. Instead, you must use a special interop library that exposes wrapped versions of any JavaScript objects you access.
Spider tries to learn from its predecessors and build a real programming language that will make developers and teams happy:
- Instead of bringing a completely new indentation-based syntax like CoffeeScript, Spider preserves JavaScript's familiar syntax that we all use everyday.
- Instead of just introducing classes, Spider embraces JavaScript's prototype-based OOP and makes it much easier to use using keywords like extends and super.
- Spider is fully compatible with libraries like Angular.js, Meteor, jQuery, Sails.js and other existing JS libraries without any extra effort.
- Spider is an extremely safe language. It has a great compile-time error reporting system, and all uses of the global scope must be explicit. Spider also fixes many JavaScript problems. For example, == is automatically compiled to ===, and the typeof operator supports array, date, regexp and more.
- Spider has useful syntactic sugar like Splats, Array Slicing and Splicing, Existential Operator, Ranges, List Comprehensions, Destructuring, Curried Functions and much more.
- Spider has strong concurrency features such as Async/Await and Channels.
- Spider compiles to ES6, and has an ES5 target that uses Google's Traceur Compiler behind the scenes.
fn TimeMachine(pilot) {
this.pilot = pilot;
this.go = fn (noise) {
::console.log(noise);
};
}
fn Tardis()
extends TimeMachine("The Doctor") {
this.go = () =>
super.go("vorp vorp");
}
fn DeLorean()
extends TimeMachine("Marty") {
this.go = () =>
super.go("One point twenty-one gigawatts!");
}
for timeMachine in ::getTimeMachines() {
timeMachine?.go();
}
Tags:
language
browser
nodejs
Last modified 16 December 2024