GoScript

Compiles transforming Go into JavaScript so you can continue using a clean and concise sintaxis.
In fact, it is used a subset of Go since JavaScript has not native way to represent some types neither Go's statements, although some of them could be emulated (but that is not my goal).

Advantages:

Using one only language for all development. A great advantage for a company.
Allows many type errors to be caught early in the development cycle, due to static typing. (ToDo: compile to checking errors at time of compiling)
The mathematical expressions in the constants are calculated at the translation stage. (ToDo)
The lines numbers in the unminified generated JavaScript match up with the lines numbers in the original source file.
Generates minimized JavaScript.

Go sintaxis not supported:

Complex numbers, integers of 64 bits.
Function type, interface type excepting the empty interface.
Channels, goroutines (could be transformed to Web Workers).
Built-in function recover().
Defer statement.
Goto, labels. (1) In JavaScript, the labels are restricted to "for" and "while" loops when they are called from "continue" and "break" directives so its use is very limited, and (2) it is advised to avoid its use.

Note: JavaScript can not actually do meaningful integer arithmetic on anything bigger than 2^53. Also bitwise logical operations only have defined results (per the spec) up to 32 bits.
By this reason, the integers of 64 bits are unsupported.

Transformation

Initialization

The values are initialized explicitly like Go does, else they would be "undefined".

var s1; if (s1 === undefined) { alert("s1 is of value 'undefined'"); }
var s2 = ""; if (s2 === "") { alert("s2 is an empty string"); }

Comparison

In JavaScript, when objects are compared then the identity is checked, no comparison of properties or elements is done.

One way without a custom comparison function is to compare its string representations, but using the JSON object.
Here there is an example that shows the why:

var a = [1, [1, 1], 1], b = [[1, 1], [1, 1]];

console.log("String() => a: \"" + String(a) + "\" b: \"" + String(b) + "\"")
if (String(a) === String(b)) { console.log("String(): equals"); }

console.log("JSON() => a: \"" + JSON.stringify(a) + "\" b: \"" + JSON.stringify(b) + "\"")
if (JSON.stringify(a) === JSON.stringify(b)) { console.log("JSON(): equals"); }

	String() => a: "1,1,1,1" b: "1,1,1,1"
	String(): equals
	JSON() => a: "[1,[1,1],1]" b: "[[1,1],[1,1]]"

Pointers

There are five primitive values in JavaScript that are stored directly in the stack: Null, Undefined, Boolean, String and Number. Objects, arrays and everything else are reference types.
But you do not pass by reference in JavaScript. Not ever. You always pass a value from the stack. If the value happens to be a pointer, then it may appear as if you were passing by reference, but in reality you aren't.
ECMAScript is simply not able to pass by reference.

The emulation is done using an object with a field named p. So:

*x and x is x.p in javascript while &x would simply be x.

Then, for any variable that is addressed:

var x *bool to var x = {p:false}

Note: the printing of an address in Go (&x) results into an hexadecimal address. Instead, in JavaScript with this emulation, it prints the value.

Warning: due to JavaScript design, it cann't be guaranteed that the emulation of pointers can work in other scenes that are not in the test file.

Return of multiple values

When a Go function returns more than one value then those values are put into an array. Then, to access to the different values it is created a variable _ assigned to the return of the function, and the variable's names defined in Go are used to access to each value of that array.

By example, for a Go function like this:

sum, product := sumAndProduct(x, y)

its transformation would be:

var _ = SumAndProduct(x, y), sum = _[0], product = _[1];

Library

JavaScript has several built-in functions and constants which can be transformed from Go. They are defined in the maps Constant, and Function.

Since the Go functions print() and println() are used to debug then they are transformed to console.log(), which only can be used if the JavaScript code is run in Webkit (Chrome, Safari), of Mozilla Firefox with the plugin FireBug.

panic() is transformed to throw new Error()

Modularity

JavaScript has not some kind of module system built in. To simulate it, all the code for the package is written inside an anonymous function which is called directly. Then, it is used a helper function to give to an object (named like the package) the values that must be exported.

By example, for a package named foo with names exported Add and Product:

var foo = {}; (function() {
// Code of your package

_export(foo, [Add, Product])
})();

Installation

go get github.com/kless/GoScript

Operating instructions

<< INSTRUCTIONS TO RUN THE PROGRAM >>

Contributing

If you are going to change code related to the compiler then you should run go test after of each change in your forked repository. It will transform the Go files in the directory "test"; to see the differences use git diff, checking whether the change is what you were expecting.
It is also expected to get some errors and warnings in some of them, which are validated using the test functions for examples. See file "gojs/gojs_test.go".

Ideas:

Implement the new JS API for HTML5, transforming it from Go functions. See both maps Constant and Function in file "gojs/library.go". But you must be sure that the API is already implemented in both browsers Firefox and Chrome.
The Dart library could be used like inspiration to write web libraries, especially "dom" and "html".
JavaScript library to handle integers of 64 bits. Build it in Go since it can be transformed to JS ;)

Vision

The great problem of the web developing is that there is one specification and multiple implementations with the result of that different browsers have different implementations for both DOM and JavaScript.
So the solution is obvious; one specification and one implementation. And here comes Go.

Go it's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to get the most out of multicore. The Go compilers support three instruction sets (AMD64, 386, ARM) and can target the FreeBSD, Linux, OS X, and Windows operating systems; which means that it can be run in whatever system where is running your browser.
Ago time I had the idea (by my past in Python) of use Go like if were a script language; the result was GoNow which compiles, caching the executable, to run it directly if the source code has not been changed. Now, to know if a web program has changed would not be so difficult if were used a convention in its name; i.e. with "foo-12.21.go" (12 for year, 21 for month) can be got its date of releasing.

I've done another little step with the building of GoScript, a compiler from Go to JavaScript, although it isn't finished but its development is very advanced.

Now, I hope that somebody motivated contributes to get that Go been the next web language. It would be necessary:

A DOM library implemented in Go. References:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Gecko_DOM_Reference
http://api.dartlang.org/dom.html
http://api.dartlang.org/html.html

Then, if we want to use web technology to build user interfaces in desktop applications:

A parser for HTML5
Another one for CSS3
Building of visual elements, using SVG (or CSS3?)

Note that the great advantage of use HTML5/CSS3 is that (1) there are many designers that know how to use it, and (2) our work to get that it works in wathever platform (web, desktop, mobile) would be almost zero.

Credits

Thanks

To Big Yuuta for licensing the examples of his awesome book for novices under public domain.
To the community of comp.lang.javascript news for solving me some doubts in that language.
To the community of the Go group.
And to the creators and contributors of Go.

Copyright and licensing

Generated by GoWizard

ojowinter/test