alt Hacker NewsHey there, I'm going to check out your project because the comments here have me a little worried that OP's project might have some quality issues.
Two things I found a little confusing from the docs though:
I couldn't easily find a page describing what it can't do yet. I saw that it only works with a "strict, deterministic subset of TypeScript", but is there a page showing what's included and not included in that subset?
Also, what's an "ambient surface" in this context? Is that a compiler term I'm just not familiar with?
> strict, deterministic subset of TypeScript
I'll add that page, thanks. Today, almost all of idiomatic TS is supported including most of its utility classes. Dynamic JS-style code is not supported, for example adding a function or a field into an object, prototype-based class modifications etc. I'll compile a list, and include it along with the large docs cleanup planned before v1.
> Also, what's an "ambient surface" in this context?
The idea is that when JS gets transpiled into C# (or Rust, upcoming), JS globals and built-ins are invalid. The native "surface" is C#, meaning the string is .Net's string type and the methods that you expect on JS strings would be missing. But when you opt in to a surface, such as the "JS surface", the compiler applies surface defined translations such as substring becoming SubString, either directly or via a companion helper class. This allows you to write against standard JS and Node APIs, instead of relying on the stdlib/builtins of the target framework (currently CLR). And you get the JS "stdlib" - console, JSON, Date, Map, Set etc.
For example, all the projects you see under this use the JS surface: https://github.com/tsoniclang/proof-is-in-the-pudding/tree/m...