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What Anders Hejlsberg thinks about JavaScript

@anders-hejlsberg · 26 positions · 0 changes of mind

Danish software engineer and Microsoft technical fellow, creator of Turbo Pascal and Delphi and lead architect of C# and TypeScript.

Anders Hejlsberg did not write this page.

We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.

6 dated positions, 2026, in their own words. Our reading of what Anders Hejlsberg has said — not written or endorsed by them.

  1. Our readingFunction colouring is the real cost of async/await, and green threads like Go's avoid it — but for an existing runtime such as JavaScript or C#, async/await was still the right solution.

    Their wordsSo that's unfortunate, and that's why some environments like Go, for example, has has Go routines and green threads, which are really language emulated lightweight threads that kind of do what I'm talking about, but but at a much lower cost. But you avoid the function coloring. So there is a bunch of different things, but but you know, but for an environment that already exists like JavaScript or like C# and and the Windows event loop and and whatever, this this was the right solution.

    ↗TypeScript, C# and Turbo Pascal with Anders Hejlsbergyoutube.com 9th of 26 in this recording

    Interesting

  3. Our readingThe language that actually delivered write-once-run-anywhere was not Java but JavaScript, because every new device turned out to ship a browser.

    Their wordsbut lo and behold, they all run browsers with JavaScript in it. Lo and behold, the real cross-platform language isn't Java. It's JavaScript.

    ↗TypeScript, C# and Turbo Pascal with Anders Hejlsbergyoutube.com 10th of 26 in this recording

    Interesting

  5. Our readingYou cannot be best of breed in an ecosystem by telling its developers to write in a different programming language.

    Their wordsI mean, surely you're not going to be best of breed in the JavaScript ecosystem by telling people to write in a different programming language.

    ↗TypeScript, C# and Turbo Pascal with Anders Hejlsbergyoutube.com 11th of 26 in this recording

    Interesting

  7. Our readingA proprietary language licensed from Microsoft had zero chance in the JavaScript ecosystem: TypeScript had to be open source or nobody would come.

    Their wordsAnd we we full well knew that there was absolutely zero chance that we would appeal to the JavaScript ecosystem with a proprietary programming language licensed from Microsoft. No. No one was going to come. It had to be open source. There was just no two ways about it, right?

    ↗TypeScript, C# and Turbo Pascal with Anders Hejlsbergyoutube.com 13th of 26 in this recording

    TypeScriptopen sourceMicrosoft

    Interesting

  9. Our readingBecause its types are erased before the program runs, TypeScript can afford not to be sound: checking 99% beats the 0% JavaScript checked, and buys features a sound language cannot offer.

    Their wordsSo, if we're checking 99% instead of 100%, well, heck, that's better than the 0% that JavaScript checked, right? And it gives you like language features that no other languages can provide because they can't get to 100%.

    ↗TypeScript, C# and Turbo Pascal with Anders Hejlsbergyoutube.com 18th of 26 in this recording

    TypeScript

    Interesting

  11. Our readingThe language best suited to AI is simply the one the models have seen most of in training, which is why they do so well on JavaScript, TypeScript and Python.

    Their wordsthat the language that's most suited for AI is the language that AI has seen the most of in its training set, right? And that's why you could argue AI does really well on JavaScript and TypeScript and Python because it's seen an awful lot of it

    ↗TypeScript, C# and Turbo Pascal with Anders Hejlsbergyoutube.com 19th of 26 in this recording

    TypeScriptPython

    Interesting