The issue is not that Anders is incapable. His best argument was that they wanted to have the new code look like the old code. Many of the other arguments Anders brought forward were confusing, since some of them were technically incorrect. This raises some questions.
Typescript is a huge success from Microsoft in terms of recapturing developers, without them knowing. MS is not a charity, look at how little love they give to F# compared to TS.
* My personal guess is that the age old MS instinct came into play: be coûte que coûte backwards compatible, port all the bugs, do not disturb anything.
* A second reason might be that TS people might not want to learn .net because of vibes. Do not underestimate vibes. Almost everyday on HN I see Python programs being posted where most often the creator would be better of if they had learned some next programming language. Decisions are seldomly made on a technical basis. We as humans decide emotionally, sometimes with rationalizations afterwards.
And so, maybe Anders was rational in acknowledging the dev-social situation as is.
Whatever the reason, this will not be without consequences. The team now has to invest in GO and now depends on Google to take TS forward. And yes, this is also typical MS, one department can easily undo the other.
TLDR: the technical arguments were mostly nonsense, but the real arguments have likely more to do with age-old reflexes and dev-cultural issues.
Typescript is a huge success from Microsoft in terms of recapturing developers, without them knowing. MS is not a charity, look at how little love they give to F# compared to TS.
* My personal guess is that the age old MS instinct came into play: be coûte que coûte backwards compatible, port all the bugs, do not disturb anything.
* A second reason might be that TS people might not want to learn .net because of vibes. Do not underestimate vibes. Almost everyday on HN I see Python programs being posted where most often the creator would be better of if they had learned some next programming language. Decisions are seldomly made on a technical basis. We as humans decide emotionally, sometimes with rationalizations afterwards. And so, maybe Anders was rational in acknowledging the dev-social situation as is.
Whatever the reason, this will not be without consequences. The team now has to invest in GO and now depends on Google to take TS forward. And yes, this is also typical MS, one department can easily undo the other.
TLDR: the technical arguments were mostly nonsense, but the real arguments have likely more to do with age-old reflexes and dev-cultural issues.