Onux is still trying to fill gaps in JavaScript with the release of JS++ 0.4.2. JS++ is the company’s safe superset of the programming language designed to address the lack of type safety in JavaScript. The latest release features modules, function overloading, dead code elimination, and new integrations.
According to Roger Poon, founder of Onux, the biggest feature of this release is dead code elimination. “It’s important because, traditionally, you would need to ship entire JavaScript libraries just to use one or two functions,” he said.
“JavaScript libraries are growing larger and larger, and applications with dependencies on these libraries must ship the entire libraries. This increases load times, which is especially problematic on slower mobile connections.”
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With dead code elimination, only the functions that users will actually use end up in the final compiled code. Dead code elimination also ensures unused overloads and unused functions won’t be compiled in the final output.
In addition, the latest version provides better integration with Microsoft Windows, as well as 16 new code editor integrations. The new integrations are Sublime Text, Notepad++, Visual Studio Code, Vim, GitHub Atom, Adobe Brackets, GNU Emacs, UltraEdit, gedit, Kate, KWrite, Nano, Geany, Ace, CodeMirror, and Alex Gorbatchev’s SyntaxHighlighter.
JS++ is still in an early access preview beta. Poon expected the programming language to be feature-complete by March of next year. The feature-complete release will be known as version 0.4.7. The upcoming version of JS++, 0.4.3, is expected to be released later this year and will focus on class-based OOP.
