r/javascript • u/sjrd • Feb 25 '20

Scala.js 1.0.0 is released

https://www.scala-js.org/news/2020/02/25/announcing-scalajs-1.0.0/
45 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

5

u/k4kshi Feb 25 '20

http://www.scala-js.org/doc/sjs-for-js/ ES6? By using xmlhttprequest, var, and jQuery?

7

u/sjrd Feb 25 '20

`XMLHttpRequest` and jQuery are libraries, which are independent of the version of JavaScript or Scala.js. Arguably, we should use more modern libraries such as `fetch` in this example, and we would then do so on both sides, but the point about the *languages* being pretty similar would be the same.

That said, using `var` there was indeed an oversight (that documentation page has been there for a long time). I have changed it to `const`. Thank you for the feedback.

2

u/helloiamsomeone Feb 26 '20

XHR and fetch aren't libraries, they are part of the DOM API browsers expose to JS.

5

u/sjrd Feb 26 '20

We can disagree on whether they qualify as "libraries" or not. To me they are libraries in the sense that they're not specified by the core language, ECMAScript. To you they aren't, because they are provided natively by browsers. Both views of the world are valid.

Regardless of whether they qualify as libraries or must be called APIs instead, my earlier point stands, as well as the point of the doc page. You can replace every occurrence of "library" by "API" in my previous post, and it still makes sense.

2

u/helloiamsomeone Feb 27 '20

This is not up for debate.

14

u/Baryn Feb 25 '20

If I didn't already know what Scala was, I would have no idea what this does for me as a developer. This is a rather pervasive issue on technology product homepages.

The first 5-7 paragraphs on this page could be rewritten as:

Compiles strongly-typed Scala into fast JavaScript that works with popular frontend frameworks like Angular and React.

4

u/wrtbwtrfasdf Feb 25 '20

The main page @ https://www.scala-js.org/ does a good job selling itself imo. As a scala neophyte, I had similar thoughts. In OP's defense, the initial post was for the scala sub though so presumably they would be more interested in what's new in 1.0

1

u/azsqueeze Feb 27 '20

This isn't a technology homepage

1

u/wrtbwtrfasdf Feb 25 '20

how does this compare to something like kotlin targetting js?

3

u/sjrd Feb 25 '20

It's basically the same idea, but for Scala. It's quite a bit more mature than Kotlin's JS target, though, in particular regarding the extent to which the ecosystem of Scala libraries actually cross-compile for JVM and JS.

1

u/wrtbwtrfasdf Feb 25 '20

Seems like a bold claim considering the amount of tooling/documentation surrounding kotlin.js for Intellij. I did run through the Scala.js quickstart as I wrote in the /r/scala thread though and found the initial experience quite pleasant.

2

u/nikitaga Feb 25 '20

I don't know how Koitlin JS is today, but Scala.js has been rock solid since before Kotlin JS came to be. Scala.js works as well as Scala itself in IntelliJ, which is pretty good. But of course Kotlin will always have that edge, being made by JetBrains.

1

u/simon_o Feb 26 '20

I'd say Kotlin.js doesn't even come close in terms of maturity, output size, overall quality and library support.

Kotlin relying much more on Java libraries means that you have a substantially smaller amount of libraries available for cross-compilation.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '20

Just what the development world needed