TypeScript does to me (and technically I suppose it is a different language), where it gets interesting is that TS made me a better JS programmer since I could express stuff the way I wanted to and then look at the output.

The only transpiler I've seen that gets close in terms of quality of output is BuckleScript, that thing is damn near magic but TS has the momentum and adoption.

TypeScript has been so good and caused me so few problems that I actually look at ways of moving more bits to the frontend, it makes it pleasant to work and I think (personally) the highest praise you can give a language is that it's pleasant.

Typescript with TsLint is a godsend on larger codebases. It makes JavaScript into a pretty solid language for big projects.

Without it you frequently run into objects passed to you after going through 10k lines of code and it becomes a wicked game to figure out which properties the object actually has at that point.

JavaScript, even ES6, is IMO crap for large codebases.

Does this object have the property I'm looking for? Did somebody overwrite it with the wrong type 5000 lines ago? Why is the prototype chain broken? Where's my damn inline documentation.

My company has abandoned JavaScript wholesale with great relief. If it was a physical object we would have tossed it off the balcony.

Typescript is essential for large codebases / many devs.

> My company has abandoned JavaScript wholesale with great relief. If it was a physical object we would have tossed it off the balcony.

I would like to do the same with our gigantic SPA-ghetti.

There's no time like the present to start! Typescript's allowJS compiler option and comment-based approach lets you start with the spaghetti you have and slowly transition to Typescript.

(Though I'm still fan of the "rip off the Band-Aid" approach I used in a few projects back in the day: rename every .js to .ts and then fix compiler errors until things compile. allowJS is a great option now.)

The true source of your problems there are mutation, which in my opinion is the primary source of issues. Immutable data structures being the most benefit.

I also believe dynamic language tooling has regressed.

> I also believe dynamic language tooling has regressed.

I'd truthfully love to hear more about that. Care to elaborate?

I've worked with common lisp, clojure, python and javascript, and common lisp debuggers are just hands down better in everyway. Check this series for what should be a basic debugging experience by now http://malisper.me/debugging-lisp-part-1-recompilation/

What do you like about ES6? It just looks like syntactic sugar to me, but I'm always interested in re-evaluating.

Writing [1,2,3].map(function(x) { return x+10 }) really doesn't bother me. I don't see what the benefit is of an arrow function. Are there other things that you like?

As the OP mentions, the inheritance stuff is just likely to cause architecture headaches. I like JavaScript's concurrency model (single threaded with callbacks) so I don't see any benefit to the async stuff.

It just seems like people added a ton of complexity to give up a few keystrokes. Transpiling and shimming and adding more control structures make your application more complicated, so there is a real cost. And keystrokes are not generally a big problem when I'm programming. I'm not in a race.

The big deal of an arrow function, brevity aside, is that it inherits the value of 'this' from the scope that creates it. Regular functions do not, so to use them as first-class functions you often have to bind before passing, pass around thisObjs for rebinding, do a 'that = this' type trick, etc.

Same goes for 'arguments', though that comes up less. Basically, they're much more representative of a simple lambda than a classical function.

What's wrong with explicitly binding the scope? I really like that in JavaScript you have to be explicit about that kind of thing.

I think the problem with "this" is that you are trying to recreate classes instead of passing it as a parameter, or using currying. Arrow functions might be slightly more intuitive to intention, but the problem is still there. The implicit nature of "this" in JS is always worse than any explicitly controlled alternative.

The syntax of the arrow function does a great job of making this explicit too. On top of that it offers 1) brevity/ease of use, and 2) standardization.

From my experience at least, binding to the outer/creating scope is something I do very often, and as far as I know my use of JS is pretty idiomatic.

Concerning 1, being able to use terser, clearer syntax for something I do so often is a huge win, and in regards to 2, it's nice to see an arrow function and to immediately know what this means, and hella better than having to search for a .bind(), var self = this, var that = this, Car.method(), etc, all equally valid as an approach, and depending entirely on the whims of the programmer behind this code.

I actually find it much more clear for this to be set at the place you see the function defined in code--assuming you know what this is in the wrapping scope, you know exactly what it will be in this scope. Technically a bind is more explicit but in practice the bind tends not to happen where the function is defined so you have to go fishing around the code path for it.

And honestly, the sugar often speaks to readability as well. Compare myArray.every(function (x) { return x; }); with myArray.every(x => x).

The first is more readable. It uses more common tokens, and is therefore more easily recognizable. You're confusing brevity for readability.

I don't understand your scope preference. These seem the same to me:

  family.findEldestFirst(person => this.isRoyal() && person.name == "Kate")

vs

  family.findEldestFirst(isPrincess.bind(family))

  function isPrincess(person) {
    return this.isRoyal() && person.name == "Kate"
  }

11 tokens vs 16, same order of magnitude. Second one has an explicit return, which is good for readability. Shorter lines, to which is better for readability. Also relies on fewer control structures, which is good for readability. No need to understand the =>/-> distinction, which is very subtle and beginners won't know about it. To me I'd rather just learn functions and closures and be done with it.

... And frankly I think using "this" that way in either case is not a win. I'd rather make family its own argument to isPrincess:

  family.findEldestFirst(isPrincess.bind(null, family))

  function isPrincess(family, person) {
    return family.isRoyal() && person.name == "Kate"
  }

Mm. Dat explicitness. Anyway... I think I'm not understanding you. How is this forcing your hand in terms of where you bind the scope?

Franky, my sense is that the people who like ES6 and promises are people who are just allergic to writing named functions. Named functions make callback hell go away, and they solve all the problems these arrow functions do. Somehow people think it's bad form to define lots of functions. But defining functions is my job. :) It doesn't bother me.

My sense is it's just Rubyists who miss Ruby and think "more Rubyish" is better. I sympathize because my path was BASIC -> PHP -> C# -> Ruby -> JavaScript. But I think it is a mistake to try to bring your old idioms to a new language.

... and if I wanted to reduce character count above all else, I'd just go use PERL.

> It just seems like people added a ton of complexity to give up a few keystrokes.

It's either "only syntactic sugar" or it "added a ton of complexity". To be honest, you sound like someone who's bitter because all the hard stuff you had to learn to deal with is now super simple and intuitive.

> I like JavaScript's concurrency model (single threaded with callbacks) so I don't see any benefit to the async stuff.

This sentence also demonstrates you either don't understand the concurrency model or async/await (async/await doesn't change the concurrency model).

The syntactic sugar isn't only there to save keystrokes, it also makes code easier to read and is less prone to errors.

ES6 is not just syntactic sugar, in fact arrow functions themselves are not only syntactic sugar- they bind `this` lexically, which is different to how `function() {}` works. Symbols, generators... the list goes on.

I won't disagree about the added complexity.

sure, if I would write code like that it wouldn't bother me too.

    const add = x => y => x +y;
    ...
    [1,2,3,4].map(add(1));

now we are talking ;)