Ask HN: Is Visual Studio Code a New 'Java'?
I have been trying to figure out Microsoft's investment in Visual Studio Code. They spend a lot of time and energy working on the system and expanding it and given that they are a publicly traded company it isn't just because they heart Open Source so darned much.
I think that the recent efforts to make Visual Studio Code run in a browser are the first steps in MS making a modern 'Java' that not only allows you to build Mac, Windows and Linux apps but also web apps that look and act like desktop apps.
MS has Typescript and via Github it has Electron. So it has a language and a 'platform'. It doesn't control Node or Chromium though so the entire delivery chain isn't under their control but it looks as if they are working on a system that will let them promise 'write once' by removing the underlying OS.
What does everyone else think? Likely? One is a programming language, the other is an IDE, so my answer would be "no". JavaScript is the new Java. But Google holds Chromium, the One True Runtime. Microsoft, scared of that, focused on owning the entire ecosystem around it: npm, TypeScript, GitHub, VS Code, Electron are all are in Microsoft's hands. It's very clever.