At the rate the Typescript is releasing, that'd be a support nightmare. Perhaps a better solution is for TC39 to propose optional types. It could be modeled on Typescript for sure, but it would still be backward compatible.

Javascript of today borrows liberally from coffeescript of yesterday, so it would make sense for javascript of tomorrow to borrow liberally from typescript of today.

You can have that with WASM.

But then if that's an option, I think Typescript will be the last language I migrate to, because Typescript development culture, tending as it does towards overcomplicated solutions to simple problems, is unpalatable to me.

I'm drawn to the idea of using Rust over WASM as a frontend language, and I think I'd rather choose that approach to develop any browser UI where type safety is critical, provided there is no discernable difference in performance (when compared to TS over WASM).

Yes, it's probably a better idea to improve WASM than add a proprietary format (TS is by Microsoft) to the open browsers. Google tried to do the same thing with Dart and it was decried about a decade ago, so now they use it for Flutter.

I think it will be great once support is broad enough. It might, ironically, increase the current fashion for framework churn, but at least there will be no single language for developers to derride.

In fact, I wonder how ECMAScript will fare in a post WASM world... I suspect it would still thrive tbh. Or perhaps people will take to other flexible, expressive languages for UI development. Like Python's niche in computer graphics, or Lua in games and AI research.

I can still see myself using JS in that future. But not for everything.