Anders Hejlsberg On C# And TypeScript
Anders Hejlsberg is responsible for the biggest shake-ups in the language world. If he only created Turbo Pascal and Delphi he could have retired famous. Add C# and TypeScript and he is a living legend.
Many a working senior programmer cut their teeth on Turbo Pascal and later Delphi – an object-oriented version of Pascal. His big break was the designing of C# and the .NET system for Microsoft. This was the new way to do everything and it would have swept away all before it if it wasn’t for the resistance of the C++ programmers who generally saw C# and .NET as an existential threat.
At the time many complained that .NET was replacing classic Visual Basic and a way of programming that was so easy anyone could do it by something more complex, strongly types and properly object oriented from the start. However, those who tried it were generally swept off their feet, even if they still mourned the loss of classic VB as a RAD.
The early C# years looked so promising. A new way to program Windows and Microsoft was 100% behind it. Then the cracks started to show and .NET didn’t look so unassailable. Eventually, along with the disaster that was Windows 8 and the Windows Phone, C# was sidelined by strange C++ systems based on COM. It was as if the dinosaurs were waking up and eating all the mammals they could find.
Of course, we now know that Microsoft basically openwashed .NET and didn’t really seem to mind whether is swam or sank. At the moment, I’m not sure which it did. The open source .NET seems to be alive and well and kicking and I use it ,but if Microsoft had not been misled during the Windows 8 era and after and if Balmer’s cry of “developers, developers, developers” still had any meaning then perhaps C# would be the alternative to C/C++ that we all use and not the non-object-oriented Rust.
Then there is TypeScript. A better version of JavaScript, but who asked for that? My feeling, although I have little evidence, is that Anders basically realized that the writing was on the wall for C# and decided to start another project and “fix” JavaScript.
Now you can have different opinions on whether JavaScript needed fixing, and I have to admit that if I was a believer in strong typing, I would try to fix JavaScript – but not by adding a compile step to an interpreted language. JavaScript is a language the benefits from interactive development – see A Better Way To Program. Putting a compiler in the workflow of a language like JavaScript is like forcing a fish to ride a bicycle but… I somehow don’t think that Anders will look back on TypeScript as his finest moment, but then again it would be difficult to top the elegance and safety of C#.
To be clear, if I’m going to have to use a compiler to produce JavaScript, I don’t think I’d start from TypeScript – there are so many better choices.
In this video Anders talks about those early days and about his latest work and you can hear the story from his side of the fence:
Of course, the future of language design is now in turmoil. Do we even need computer languages when there is AI?
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