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LiveScript VS Emscripten

Compare LiveScript VS Emscripten and see what are their differences

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LiveScript logo LiveScript

LiveScript is a language which compiles down to JavaScript.

Emscripten logo Emscripten

Emscripten is an LLVM to JavaScript compiler.
  • LiveScript Landing page
    Landing page //
    2019-03-23
  • Emscripten Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-08-02

LiveScript features and specs

  • Syntactic Sugar
    LiveScript offers a lot of syntactic sugar over JavaScript, making the code more concise and expressive. This includes cleaner function syntax, implicit returns, and significant whitespace, which can lead to faster development and more readable code.
  • Functional Programming
    LiveScript is designed with an emphasis on functional programming. It includes features like pattern matching, destructuring assignment, and first-class functions, which make it easier to write functional code compared to traditional JavaScript.
  • Compilation to JavaScript
    LiveScript compiles to JavaScript, which means it can be used anywhere JavaScript runs. This ensures compatibility with any JavaScript environment, including browsers and Node.js.
  • Extensive Built-in Functions
    The language includes a wide array of built-in higher-order functions which make operations like map, filter, and reduce easier to implement without needing to rely on external libraries.
  • Community and Ecosystem
    Benefiting from the JavaScript ecosystem, LiveScript has access to the vast array of JavaScript libraries and tools, making it versatile and largely adaptable to various projects.

Possible disadvantages of LiveScript

  • Small Community
    LiveScript has a smaller user base compared to other JavaScript transpilers like TypeScript or CoffeeScript, leading to fewer resources, less community support, and limited third-party integrations.
  • Learning Curve
    For developers used to traditional JavaScript, LiveScript’s unique syntax and functional programming style can pose a steep learning curve, requiring a shift in thinking and additional time to master.
  • Debugging Challenges
    Debugging LiveScript can be more challenging because developers often have to interpret the compiled JavaScript output rather than the original LiveScript code, which can be time-consuming and complex.
  • Lack of Type Safety
    Unlike TypeScript, LiveScript does not offer built-in static type checking, which can lead to runtime errors that might have been caught during a compile-time check in a language with stronger type support.
  • Adoption and Maintenance
    LiveScript is not as widely adopted as other languages that transpile to JavaScript, which raises concerns about its long-term maintenance and the potential for becoming obsolete if not actively maintained.

Emscripten features and specs

  • Cross-platform compatibility
    Emscripten enables developers to compile C and C++ code to WebAssembly or JavaScript, allowing the same codebase to run on multiple platforms, such as browsers and node.js, without needing additional platform-specific adaptations.
  • Leverage existing libraries
    Developers can utilize a vast ecosystem of existing C and C++ libraries by compiling them for the web, saving time and resources required for rewriting or finding alternatives developed in JavaScript.
  • Performance optimization
    Emscripten's compilation to WebAssembly provides near-native performance for web applications, making it suitable for compute-intensive tasks like gaming, simulations, and data processing.
  • Familiar toolchain
    Developers can use familiar tools like CMake and others as part of their Emscripten workflow, making it easier for those with C/C++ backgrounds to adapt and integrate into their web development processes.

Possible disadvantages of Emscripten

  • Steep learning curve
    Developers unfamiliar with C and C++ may find Emscripten challenging to use effectively, as it requires knowledge of these languages and their build systems to create and debug applications.
  • Limitations in browser environments
    Certain features of C/C++ may not translate directly to web environments due to browser sandboxing constraints, leading to potential issues with file I/O, threading, and other system-level operations.
  • Code size
    Compiled WebAssembly and JavaScript code can sometimes be large, potentially affecting load times and performance, especially on lower-end devices with restrictive bandwidth or processing capabilities.
  • Debugging complexity
    Debugging WebAssembly code can be more complex than traditional JavaScript, requiring specialized tooling and techniques to trace and fix issues effectively.

LiveScript videos

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Emscripten videos

Monster Madness Online (Emscripten Web Technology Overview)

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to LiveScript and Emscripten)
Programming Language
100 100%
0% 0
IDE
0 0%
100% 100
OOP
100 100%
0% 0
Email Marketing
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Emscripten should be more popular than LiveScript. It has been mentiond 47 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

LiveScript mentions (8)

  • Oracle justified its JavaScript trademark with Node.js–now it wants that ignored
    That's an interesting idea. Just to mention though: LiveScript is a really great language that compiles to JavaScript. https://livescript.net/. - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • Oracle justified its JavaScript trademark with Node.js–now it wants that ignored
    It was a better name for JavaScript. It is a better name for another project that is better named than JavaScript and owns the name LiveScript now. https://livescript.net/. - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • Civet: A Superset of TypeScript
    I know this hasn't been updated, and I know it's a fork of CoffeeScript, but https://livescript.net/ has had a lot of the "magic" syntax here for quite a while. - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago
  • Netscape and Sun announce JavaScript (1995)
    Fun fact: LiveScript is a FP-oriented language which compiles to JavaScript. It's been around for a while now :-) https://livescript.net/. - Source: Hacker News / almost 2 years ago
  • Dear Oracle, Please Release the JavaScript Trademark
    Too late. The name was taken when it was free. https://livescript.net/ (But seems inactive judging by GitHub). Actually a mostly quite nice little toy language. (Only the OOP part seems messed up a little bit; but besides that it looks quite clean). - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
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Emscripten mentions (47)

  • Ask HN: Qt style "Signals and Slots" based JavaScript UI library?
    The first thing that comes to mind is that Qt now has a WebAssembly port[1] using Emscripten[2], so depending on your use-case, you could possibly just run Qt on the Web platform and avoid the need for a JavaScript framework entirely. [1]: https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/wasm.html [2]: https://emscripten.org. - Source: Hacker News / 15 days ago
  • Ask HN: Resources for Learning Graphics Programming
    Me and a friend build our own Graphics engines based on https://learnopengl.com I can highly recommend this to everyone who gets started with computer graphics. It is a lot of new information but not the most modern Graphics library, but the information will help you understand the field and pickup any other graphics library quicker. Once I had a small project up and running I started looking at... - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
  • Software Applications Incorporated
    Https://infinitemac.org, which is https://basilisk.cebix.net compiled for the web using https://emscripten.org. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • How does one get started with unit testing?
    One place that I’ve found some real, open source unit tests to look at for an example is in the emsdk for emscripten: https://emscripten.org. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Playing with low-level memory in WebAssembly
    I am playing around with Emscipten which wraps around clang to compile C/C++ code in WASM binary and provide some glue-code API to embed WASM binary into JavaScript. Look into MDN Docs and Emscripten SDK to get started. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing LiveScript and Emscripten, you can also consider the following products

CoffeeScript - Unfancy JavaScript

WebAssembly - Application and Data, Languages & Frameworks, and Languages

Typescript - TypeScript allows developers to compile a superset of JavaScript to plain JavaScript on any browser, host, or operating system.

GNU Compiler Collection - The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) is a compiler system produced by the GNU Project supporting...

JavaScript - Lightweight, interpreted, object-oriented language with first-class functions

Cheerp - Enterprise-grade C/C++ compiler for Web applications. Compiles to WASM/JavaScript