Talk:JScript .NET

Comments
"Both JScript and JScript .NET are languages whose syntax is heavily based on that of Sun Microsystems' Java language"

That's just completely wrong! JScript is based on JavaScript which is a completely different type of language than Java.

JScript is untyped Java is strongly typed

JScript has closures, Java does not

JScript has mutable objects like Self, Java has static objects

JScript can create new functions at run time, Java can not

JScript has first class functions, Java does not

About the only thing JScript has in common with Java is curly braces.

Hmm. On a second read through I see that you said "the syntax" was based on Java, not the symantics. Maybe - it seems more likely that the syntax was based on C and Java's syntax was based on C++.

JavaScript was orginally called LiveScript and it's name was changed at the last minute in order to confuse people and attempt to ride Java's coat tails - that doesn't mean that Java had any effect on the design of JavaScript.

Joshua Scholar

History of JScript
Um, ok, I'm not a Windows person, (because I'm not a masochist), but these two statements from the article simply don't sound right:


 * Both JScript and JScript .NET are languages whose syntax is heavily based on that of Sun Microsystems' Java language


 * JScript .NET syntax and lexical conventions are closely linked to Java, (which is why there is a 'J' in the name JScript; JScript was originally a scripting counterpart of J++, which was Microsoft's implementation of Java) and as such, users of Java and JavaScript will find it [JScript] easy to learn.

To the best of my knowledge, JScript was Microsoft's work-alike implementation of Mozilla's JavaScript; and "JavaScript" was simply a marketing name given to a project originally called LiveScript, and LiveScript was not based on Java, (in the strictest sense). LiveScript was syntactically based on the whole family of "brace, bracket, and semi-colon" languages like C, Java, etc. People often make an assumtion that Java and JavaScript have a direct relationship, but they do not. It is also problematic for people to create such links between Java and JavaScript, since they are actually fundamentally very different languages, with JavaScript being a Prototype-based programming language.

Any thoughts? func (talk) 18:04, 21 May 2005 (UTC)


 * I basically agree. JavaScript is dynamically typed whereas Java is statically_typed. As you write the syntax ("brace, bracket, and semi-colon") is within the realm of a whole family of similar looking languages. Hirzel 12:26, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Download
Where can I download JScript? Or is it just part of the .NET framework (which package?) Hirzel 12:26, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

JScript .NET as a natural successor to JScript
The article is started with this claim, and I was always confused by it since JScript .NET isn't even a normal scripting language per se, but a compiled language. We use JScript (i.e. JavaScript with MS extensions) prominently in some of our applications, but could never switch to JScript .NET since it's not a matter of modifying text files on the fly, which is the whole point of why we didn't just make it called compiled C++ code in the first place.

My point is that I personally don't see JScript .NET as a successor due to it striving for a bit different goal (running as a server-side application, and not on the client as a script), and I believe this is also a reason to why it hasn't taken of well.

I'm not sure it's a successor, much less natural. -- Northgrove 08:38, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

The claim is half valid. To the best of my knowledge, JScript .NET was indeed designed as a successor to JScript for server-side Web applications. This means in scenarios of migrating ASP (Active Server Pages) + JScript code to ASP.NET + JScript .NET code.

However, while both are based on ECMAScript (3rd Edition for original JScript and Pre-4th edition for JScript .NET), the fact that JScript .NET is much more typed, less dynamic, and compiled to the same MSIL as C# or J# makes it very different to work with in the end.

The need for more dynamic languages in .NET have been acknowledged and the DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime) is designed to allow languages closer to the original JScript and Python. Another implementation of JScript, called Managed JScript, is based on the DLR, and is much closer to the original JScript than JScript .NET could ever be. It supports being hosted in other applications and parsing while executing, while JScript .NET required the whole script to be available and parsed before starting the execution. PhMajerus —Preceding comment was added at 10:37, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Javascript and ECMAScript
There's not nearly enough mention of Javascript and ECMAScript, of which Jscript and Jscript.NET are clearly a dialect/implementation of. This article really should outline any differences that JScript has from ECMAScript 3 or 4, rather than differences between *completely* unrelated langugages like Java, C++, C#, and COBOL.
 * Especially trivial differences like "does not require a main function". Not a single person will ever read that line and exclaim, "WOW, I hate having to put the start of the program in a specific function, I'm ditching everything else!"  I may end up deleting that entire section because there's no reasonable place to stop comparing languages if you're going to including things that aren't just ECMAScript / Javascript or base .NET languages you'd need to compare it to every language that exists...  and really it has little enough in common with C#, F# or VB that even comparing those is silly.  "It compiles to NET IL bytecode rather than executing as a script" would be plenty. --A Shortfall Of Gravitas (talk) 20:27, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

This language is abandoned since a while back
The last Visual Studio version supporting it is Visual Studio 2005, which is over a decade ago (how time flies!). So in light of that, I think the todo list on how to expand the article into comparing it with other languages and so on makes little sense. By now, JScript .NET is a curiosity at best, and Microsoft is on a wholly different path with .NET, where they have since a good while back moved on to TypeScript instead, for a much more pragmatic way of "improving Javascript" as TypeScript is a superset of Javascript (ECMAScript). If I get time to, I may sit down with this article and adapt it for these changes, until then feel free... :)

BTW, for information, the MSDN documentation can be confusing on this topic. They often call JScript .NET just "JScript" (despite the language being abandoned) or "JScript 10.0", while JScript-the-Javascript-implementation is called JScript (ECMAScript3). 

&mdash; Northgrove 09:31, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

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Thank you. The Transhumanist 01:10, 12 April 2017 (UTC)