Should I use ScriptSharp

Question

I am developing my first ASP.NET MVC application and I beleive that Script# can help me a lot. But it cannot find the resource necessary to support my development.

I cou

Answer 1

I am using jQuery. It is really good. But I beleive that It is more confortable to me to work with C#. Even if it is a subset.

Answer 2

Short answer NO. Wait for TypeScript.

Script# is really cool, but MS decided not to support it at all. The reason for that turns out to be that they were working on a better version of that - TypeScript (http://www.typescriptlang.org/) It adds support for everything you need in a static language (intellisense, type checking, interfaces, classes etc.), but still looks very much like JS, and more importantly - confirms to the upcoming ECMA Script 6 standard. (unlike Script# or google's Dart)

Answer 3

Like the others have I would recommend some JavaScript (namely jQuery). Should you wish to continue with Script#, Nikhil Kothari's blog may be a good resource for you. http://www.nikhilk.net/ScriptSharpIntro.aspx -- That being said, I think you'll find that you are more productive with jQuery. There is a large database of community written plugins so you wouldn't necessarily have to reinvent the wheel on everything you want to do. jQuery plugins instead of ASP.NET Controls

Answer 4

A release went out today, so it is good to see that it is still active.

Regardless of the previous lack of updates and that it not been open sourced I would still use it over plain js. You can stop using Script# at any time and more forward with the 'compiled' js if you don't like it.

I agree with you Val though that it really only fits large js based projects. I don't think you would get much benefit out of using it to perform basic page functionality like validate form input etc. It probably wouldn't be worth setting it up.

If however you are heavily using javascript and need to replicate OOP then I think it is a must. Things like refactoring becomes so easy, with plain js I would never refactor because it was just too hard to implement, over time my code became a mess.

Wow Val you got generics to work in it, I'm impressed, was it hard? Generics support would be great, so would method and operator overloading. Are you sure that it is illegal to decompile it, I will have to have a look to see if it is the terms of use.

Answer 5

The other advantage of using ScriptSharp that no one has mentioned is that if you need to interact with C# (using AJAX/REST/SOAP) you can use the same class definitions in both places and be sure that you have the interface defined properly, because it's the same source file! I have tried to use logic in shared source files with minimal success due to the way ScriptSharp's corelib is not 100% compatible with the C# corelib. But it works great for data file definitions.

Answer 6

Don't be afraid of Javascript, it's a beautiful and powerful language. And with frameworks like jQuery, Prototype and Dojo, DOM manipulation and AJAX are greatly simplified and cross-browser issues are mostly history.

About Script#, I agree with this answer by mcintyre321. Last release over a year ago + closed source = no go for me.

UPDATE Jan/2010: there have been new Script# releases since the original writing of this answer. It's still closed-source but the author mentions open sourcing it after 1.0

UPDATE May 2011: Script# is now open source.