Why is BJS now mostly Typescript?

[dbawel]

@Deltakosh @davrous

In the past year I've and others have seen a huge shift to Typescript. Why? In my opinion it is only creating a gap between native JS and those who might wish to use a wrap-around language - which has far less advantages than native WebGL. And for the future, will create serious limitations and divisions between users. Please explain the advantage to .TS files in the Github src directory of recent versions of BJS - if you can come up with ANY good reasons. Sorry if this sounds a bit harsh, but I'm having issues working with BJS for the first time in more than 2 years due to reading and working with Typescript.

DB

[gryff]

1 hour ago, dbawel said:

In the past year I've and others have seen a huge shift to Typescript. Why?

Well David - given the background and connections of the BJS originators and developers, a quick look at this wikipedia entry for Typescript might explain why.

Quote

TypeScript is a free and open-source programming language  developed and maintained by Microsoft

Also note the line that says:

Quote

TypeScript is included as a first-class programming language in Microsoft Visual Studio 2013

What the BJS developers use every day - or perhaps later versions?

Given that javascript is hard enough for me, I'm not sure that I am happy with the direction either.

cheers, gryff: 

[inteja]

Personally, BJS being Typescript is one of the core reasons that I was drawn to it, and I've been using JS for 20 years. After all that time I still dislike javascript's idiosyncrasies. TS is cleaner and lets me use the latest bleeding edge features of ES6 right now, with type checking to boot. I value the direction the BJS project is headed.

I don't really see what the issue is. This is the direction JS is headed anyway. Like Babel, TS is just a great way to utilise the latest and greatest ES6 syntax now without sacrificing broad compatibility. Complaining about it just seems like you don't want JS to change at all, ever. But that's a different discussion.

[Kesshi]

For me Typescript was also one of the main reasons to use BabylonJs instead of ThreeJs.
I use BJS for commercial projects. That means i need to deliver robust and reliable code. I would not use plain JavaScript for big projects. Especially if different people working at the same code.
The type checking, the language features and the IDE support you get with TypeScript (i use VsCode) makes development much easier and faster.
One example would be refactoring. Lets say you rename a function or you change the data type of a variable. With plain JavaScript its very easy that you miss to adjust some code and later you get a problem in the released project.
With typescript you will get a compile error right away.
 

[davrous]

I'm going to answer that as I'm the one who forced @Deltakosh to switch to TypeScript.

First, TypeScript is "just" a superset of JavaScript, adding types and supporting future features of ECMAScript by transpiling down to ES5 or ES6. This means that we don't break anything with regular users that will just use the compiled JS version in ES5 or ES6 and will never see it comes from TypeScript.

Thanks to the switch we've made 3 years ago, we've managed to find bugs that were just under our eyes and difficult to find in plain JavaScript and we've also managed to boost our productivity on the engine, which is good for us and our community/customers. @Deltakosh has done a great article on that: https://www.eternalcoding.com/?p=103

On my side, 3 years ago, I was also concerned on the fact we were spending a lot of time answering basic questions of our users, trying to understand if there was a bug in their code or in our code. All this time was our spare time and wasn't used to improve the engine. I've then started to discuss with @Deltakosh on ways to solve that and again TypeScript was a good candidate. Why? Again, thanks to the types exposed, I’ve discovered great possibilities such as the TypeScript playground: http://www.typescriptlang.org/play/index.html

I’ve then told to @Deltakosh we could do something similar, having autocompletion in the browser, building some basic sample codes to help our users, learning by live discovering the API. Deltakosh ended up building a much better playground with great features such as saving your code to share it with your colleagues or on the forum for review, downloading the ZIP, etc. Something which would have been much more difficult without TypeScript.

TypeScript also offers us to use future features of ES now to add clarity to our code: module, class, arrow functions, generators, async/await, etc. Those are not TypeScript specifics. You will have to learn them to be able to write ES2016/ES2017 code anyway.

Regarding the fact it comes from Microsoft, this is really not what influenced us (everybody knows deltakosh and I are MSFTees). Deltakosh was even against at the beginning but quickly changed his mind when he discovered the potential behind without affecting our users. Even if it comes from Microsoft, the web community enjoys TypeScript and other big companies such as Google is using it for Angular 2.

TypeScript also offers another great benefit for us: we managed to attract talented developers such as @Nockawa writing the awesome Canvas2D extension who was mainly a C# developer. C#, C++ and Java developers tends to have difficulties understanding some paradigms of JS at the beginning such as the prototype oriented programming, the classical issue with capturing this for closure, writing module/class like with self-executed anonymous functions, etc. TypeScript is hiding that by still generating perfectly written JavaScript under the hood. I tend to find TypeScript also better to work as a team.

At last, as said before, we managed to attract some customers using Babylon.js because it is written in TypeScript and you can them fully develop with the .ts version of our engine instead of the .js to have a full typed experience during your development process.

Another great benefit: I can compile an ES6 (ES2015) or ES7 (ES2016) version today without changing a single line of code of Babylon. If we would be in plain JavaScript, we would have been forced to rewrite everything to switch from ES3/ES5 to ES6 for instance.

The only caveat is that it’s a bit more complex for contributors to the code to do PR to fix bugs or add features. But to be honest, as said, it’s just the JavaScript we will all use in 1 to 2 years. Except this small part, TS doesn’t affect our users because it’s transparent for them, we’re improving the quality of the code, we’re going faster, we’re attracting more diverse talented developers, we’re ready for the future. I really don’t see where the problem is then.

[Temechon]

One of the main reason for me is the type visibility. How many times I was asked by my team : "what kind of object do I have to give to this constructor/function?"
Now I just answer 'check the definition file / check the doc'. It's much more easier from a dev point of view.

If you want to contribute to Babylon.js, there are several articles available : 

- http://doc.babylonjs.com/generals/how_to_start

- http://doc.babylonjs.com/generals/setup_visualstudio

- http://pixelcodr.com/tutos/contribute/contribute.html

As Typescript is a superset of Javascript, all the JS code you will write IS fully compatible. And we (project admins and the whole forum family as DK said) are at your entire disposal if you want advices and PR reviews about doing your updates the best possible way.

 

[Wingnut]

Cool topic, and good info and points.

For .ts, I love it and hate it.  Right side of me loves it, left side hates it.   

JS is a "rubber" language, a "draw-in-mud-with-stick language"... finger-painting... with few rules.  That's why it is fun and quickly-accepted (easy) by bad/loose coders like me (children with power tools). 

But, computers have a different version of fun and easy... than humans do.  Typescript washes-off all the "human" from the source code, and makes the resulting JS be fun and easy... for the computer.

Just a quick reminder - current JS source can be gotten from https://raw.githubusercontent.com/BabylonJS/Babylon.js/master/dist/babylon.2.5.max.js

(for hijacking/stealing needs) 

It is more difficult to find JS pieces, but still works.

Github src folders are much cleaner/nicer, with only .ts in them. 

(Wingy sprays some Bactine on @dbawel's stubbed toe, sticks a muffin in his mouth, and pushes him back out-of the farmhouse door... to continue playing with the other children.)

[Nockawa]

I've been programming since 1992, I've seen many IDE, many languages, from pure assembly without  a debugger to C# with a full featured IDE, also cross platform C++ 3D Engines, scripting with LUA, etc. A pretty wide spectrum.

Every language has a purpose as well as their IDE. 

For me (so it's only my opinion) Javascript is in the category of script languages, it's suited for specific tasks and I don't believe it's suited for a medium/large scale project.
Duck typing is great for fast (and sometimes dirty) projects but it's not suited for larger projects.

At the end of the day it's all a matter of productivity. Yes  you can do a medium/large scale project in Javascript, but is it a good idea? Now that we have languages like TypeScript, I really think it's a no brainer.
I've spent many years coding without a debugger (ASM in protected mode), it drove me crazy to the point that I developed a debugger (long summer but one of the coolest things I've made).
I've spent many years coding without intellisense and I bless the day I could use it in C++ with Visual Assist.

I would have never started a medium scale project without a typed language, without intellisense, without a debugger. A full features 3D Engine (now along with a 2D too) is at least a medium scale project.
I would have never contributed to babylon.js if it were a 100% JS project, simply because I would have felt I wouldn't be productive enough in such environment.

Now I can understand the point of view of a user who is fine with developing in Javascript because he works on projects that are suited for that and that one day wants to contribute to babylon.js and realize it's a different story.
It is a different story, you can't transpose both experiences.

I'm not a web expert, far from it, but from my perspective I saw a paradigm shift that happened few years ago when most people/companies was doing javascript for the web because it's everywhere and they realized it wasn't suited anymore for the type of projects they were working on. We are no longer talking about few lines of script inside a HTML file, but big projects that still need to run on all web browse but needed a suited language and tooling. That why typed language producing JS code was developed.
And for me the best proof of this shift is Angular, the first version was in plain javascript and the second was made in TypeScript, and it's Google, not Microsoft!
The team did that to be more productive and the great thing about it is that you are not surrendering the true nature of JS, it's still there if you want.

At last @gryff I would say your answer is not something that can be said in 2017... Unfortunately for you I think I'm the last guy of the Core Team using Visual Studio to dev on BJS, everybody else are using VSCode or other IDE... This definition of TypeScript was true 3-4 years ago but TypeScript evolved a lot since then.

If you guys are afraid of change I would recommend to find something else than IT/Dev, because this is all about change and how we deal with it and embrace it, otherwise you won't last long... My 2 cents...

[adam]

10 hours ago, dbawel said:

I'm having issues working with BJS for the first time in more than 2 years due to reading and working with Typescript.

What are the issues?

[GameMonetize]

@dbawel Please let us know which issues you are facing. You know that we will do whatever it takes to help you

[JCPalmer]

I have not seen d.ts file mentioned yet.  This means in MY code, I can get the syntax of my calls to ANY other typescript written module (not just BJS) validated at transpile time.

Also, if it were not for Typescript, we would not have a topic with people concerned that we are moving too fast.  Yes, it puts more of a burden on people doing PR's, but that is more a first PR setup overhead.  Makes deciding to merge must more simple. 

I am on record on a topic way back, where I said Typescript will not require transpilation in the future. Reason is Javascript is the biggest piece of shit I have ever seen, and It's also not truly multi-threadable without crude tricks like workers.  How's that for harsh?

[dbawel]

Hello All,

I personally have issues with going to GitHub and finding .ts files instead of standard JavaScript I can easily read and pull from. I have a backround in Visual Studio, so I get it - however, working in a superset of JavaScript (no matter how much you believe JavaScript might suck) is the most direct way in my opinion to accomplish my personal needs. And then there is the open source element which most often doesn't comply. As and example, use this.object definition as an example. And then look at the other emerging work by many talented people who simply want to use strict code, and not look for shortcuts. Again, only my opinion, but perhaps this is why we have so many posts on the BJS forum for how BJS is moving so quickly, and so many people cannot keep up.

DB

EDIT - And @JCPalmer - everything will change within 2 years, and I'm sure you can still use typescript just fine - but might the BJS become obsolete? I hope not. And if you can predict the future, then please use kindness to convince me that I am mis-guided.

[davrous]

Hi @dbawel

TypeScript is not linked to Visual Studio or any Microsoft specific. I know a lot of people using it on Mac or Linux. It's just a language that provide convenient ways to code.

Except that, you know we're really like you and we've been working together for a long time But I'm sorry I don't get your point. What is the relationship between TypeScript and people. complaining we're moving too fast (which is to me a huge joke)? How could TS make Babylon.js more absolete than JavaScript itself given that TS is just, again, some JavaScript + types! 

Talking about Open Source contributions, it's truly better for us to have quality checked contributions thanks to the constraints of the language. And to be honest, users complaining are almost always people using it our engine and not people writing code for it.

I'm now going to be more direct. @Deltakosh and I, as well as the core team, start to be really affected by all negative feedback during the last weeks about the fact we're moving too fast, we're using TypeScript, we're not updating (for free!!!) old samples for people's own projects. Honestly, those discussions are not constructive at all and lack from convincing arguments. We always have been listening to our community, I've seen @Deltakosh spending so many of his nights and weekends implementing some users' features requests that weren't needed in our roadmap that I've tended to find all these bad feedback unfair.

David

[Nockawa]

3 hours ago, dbawel said:

I personally have issues with going to GitHub and finding .ts files instead of standard JavaScript I can easily read and pull from. I

A simple gulp command build the intermediate .js files, it's not something that hard, right? When we're contributing it was always a pain because once you compile bjs you end up with 170 modified files because the intermediate .js files were put under source control. And it's a known good practice to not put intermediate files under source control. It's a change for people tweaking bjs on their own, but come on, it's simple "npm install" "gulp typescript" commands.

3 hours ago, dbawel said:

I have a backround in Visual Studio, so I get it - however, working in a superset of JavaScript (no matter how much you believe JavaScript might suck) is the most direct way in my opinion to accomplish my personal needs

Fine, but what do you need the intermediate .js files then ? Why don't you use the babylon.max.js or the minified version instead?

 

3 hours ago, dbawel said:

And then there is the open source element which most often doesn't comply. As and example, use this.object definition as an example.

I'm sorry I don't understand this, can you elaborate please?

 

3 hours ago, dbawel said:

And then look at the other emerging work by many talented people who simply want to use strict code, and not look for shortcuts.

Same here, I don't really understand this remark in the context of BJS, can you elaborate a bit more?

[javalang]

@davrous please see this discussion not too negative. In my case, I've switched to typescript a few month ago because my JS knowledge ist't so good as I come from the C#,C++,java and python world and typescript helped me a lot to neutralize some - in my opinion- odd specificas. To see all arguments here is for me a big confirmation that my decision was right.

In this sense, even though this discussion is a bit needless, it can have a positive impact

Again, thank you, @Deltakosh and many, many others for the good work, this will for sure not overseen by the users.

[adam]

I still don't understand what the issue is. 

[Wingnut]

4 hours ago, davrous said:

What is the relationship between TypeScript and people. complaining we're moving too fast (which is to me a huge joke)? How could TS make Babylon.js more absolete than JavaScript itself given that TS is just, again, some JavaScript + types!

Hi guys!  I believe the relationship is in the (likely-) fact that JS... is MANY people's first or only programming language.  It is the web programming language of-choice, by far.  So TypeScript "contaminated" the easiest and most accepted programming/scripting language ever (JS).  In doing that, BJS lost a very large group of hobby-level programmers, and potential future contributors.  There's your relationship.  You/We took the general public's #1 most popular, easiest, notepad-programmable language that LOTS of people learned SOME-OF (in order to tweak their web pages)... and separated that from BJS.  TypeScript made BJS source "alien" to those people, including me.

Yes, it is probably an unwarranted fear and feeling of extreme inconvenience, but it is certainly not a joke.  The phenomena IS happening, whether you choose to recognize it or not.  This is one of the reasons that folks (including me) ASK-for features instead of coding them ourselves.

Many types of people don't want to work with shells, NPM, grunt, gulp, and other "compiling" and "generating".  There's plenty of them in the BJS forum.

Now, nobody is bashing BJS, nobody is bashing core programmer work accomplishments, and nobody is saying that core programmers shouldn't use what works best for them.  But I KNOW we lost some contributors when we went to pure TS.  We went from "submit a JS function"... to "Get an IDE that does TypeScript, learn TypeScript, learn to compile things".  These are things that DIDN'T need to be learned... when working with pure JS.  They were already learned when folks learned primitive JS to tweak their websites.  JS = widely accepted/used.  TS = far less accepted/used.  We lost the advantage of JS familiarity that was already established by the web. 

This all might be irrelevant.  The move to TS is likely a good idea and inevitable.  But if you think there was no newbie impact with that move, you are mistaken (imho).  We gained some ease and popularity in one area, and lost some ease and popularity in another area.  But, when Deltakosh said "just submit in JS and I will convert it to TS for you"... that took some of the "scared" away.  That helped.  He should say it more often. 

Newbies rarely know if a mod is a "good idea" or not, because they can't see the far-reaching impact on the entire framework.  Between this situation, and TypeScript's dev environment from hell (when looked-at from noob perspective), new feature  requests will continue to outnumber new feature git submits.

People who dream-up features... are often not pro-coders.  They are scene assemblers.  If we keep telling users to setup a TypeScript dev environment, code their feature request, and submit a PR... for every time they ask about the plausibility-of, or otherwise request a feature, you are going to lose a whole lot of good ideas.  You're also going to lose a whole lot of "warm fuzzies" that COULD have been given to that idea-thinking-up user... for submitting that "feature query".

We could have said "Hey, there's an interesting idea." and then discuss, talk about far-reaching impacts, talk about what errors could happen with this new feature, talk about alternatives, talk about the BJS big picture.  Instead, we say "Can you submit a PR?"  Sheeeeit.  Why not just blast the idea and user inclusion/participation excitement... with ice water from a firetruck hose.  Freeze that idea-spirit dead in its tracks.  Yay us!   SO much love for the puppies, eh? 

Are you/we trying to make BJS popular among coders only, or are you after EVERYONE, like me? 

Sometimes I think there should be a USERS forum and a CODERS forum.  Artists and storytellers and scene assemblers hang out in user forum.  Core-change ideas that come from the user-forum... would be nurtured, with on-going discussion, and a GENTLE introduction to "If you would like to add the feature to core YOURSELF, here's the first few steps of the hundred steps needed to build and learn your TypeScript dev environment").   When people say "Could you submit a PR?"... and that PR requires learning git and setting up a TS dev environment, you might as well have blasted them in the face with a shotgun.  (Not every situation is like that, but SOME situations are so.  Do we care?)

Currently, in our coder's forum... discussion is discouraged, because big dogs dislike long English comments.  Not much nurturing is allowed, or else big dogs won't help later, because the thread got too long.  So instead... "Can you submit a PR?".  ("Hey kid, here's a bucket of TypeScript ice water... that should cool you down for a few months!")    What is "our job"?

sigh.  It's not quite that bad, of course.  Big dogs DO weigh plausibility of the idea.  Generally speaking, an idea-proposer doesn't get the "can you submit a pr" line until after the idea has been deemed possible/plausible.    We idea-proposers DO appreciate that feasibility quick-weighing, and alternatives-to-modding advice.    At least I do.  I like talking.  Others... not so much.  heh.     I REALLY like listening to big dogs talk.  That's how we learn the big picture... but it's not an easy story to tell.

Possibly later, .ts dev environments will be load'n'go.  For now... they present a road bump.  That road bump is BIG to some people, and no problem for others.  But if you think the road bump is not there, or not big, you're fooling yourself.  The road bump IS big... to some.  Do we care about them?

[adam]

Javascript is Typescript.  If you want to submit a PR, simply submit the javascript and the core team will work with you.

[Nockawa]

Come on... when you know JS, TypeScript is fairly easy to learn, what's the big deal? class, properties, interfaces (which are almost not used in BJS) and instances. If the very basics concepts of Object Oriented Programming are unknown to you, spend couple of hours, it's not that hard...

For a project of this size, we need a typed/safe language, that's all. I think it's even not a debate, before there was no debate also because the only choice were javascript and many teams suffered when they had to develop middle size projects.

I repeat it again: Javascript is a scripting language, TypeScript is a programming language. Each language is a tool that is used to serve a specific purpose. This project need a programming language to ensure that we won't break things everyday without realizing it.

Ok, it's harder to set up a development environment when programming with Type Script, but we did everything we could to develop and document everything to make it as easy as possible.

Yes, people will struggle a bit at first, but it's like that for everything you learn! And we were always here to help people !

I don't think we loose people due to TS, people like @MasterK 's team are all JS and they didn't complain about BJS being TS. They even created many PR to fix/improve things, so it means it's possible. By the way you can check out their game here   (if you have a Facebook account...) you'll see what they could do with this lib. Same thing for @Numa and JIG.space. I don't see these people complaining and looks like to me they are pretty grateful of all the efforts we put through to help them. These are couple of example, but you all know the list is long.

[davrous]

Well, I definitely think you're wrong. And you obviously don't know me when you're suggesting I'm living in my world ignoring your point of view supposed to represent our community. I'm reading your point of view but I think it's wrong. It's not facts based and not convincing at all. 

I'm very concerned about the usability of Babylon.js since the very beginning and we've spent of lot of energy & creativity to make it attractive to various types of developers thanks to the choices we've made. Today, I can clearly see it's working great. It’s not always perfect, we’re committed to make progressed but globally, we’re really happy of the directions we took.

Contributing to the core engine is another story. I'm seeing a lot of people complaining whereas I can't see any major contribution to the engine from them. When I'm looking to this graph: https://github.com/BabylonJS/Babylon.js/graphs/contributors, I can see that the activity is stronger than ever talking about the contributions. And I don't see any of the major contributors complaining about our choices, speed of development or usage of TypeScript. 

You then have to think about various classes of people among our community:

- Major contributors to the engine. We're less than 20 guys
- Developers using Babylon.js 
- Designer/Artist converting their work in Babylon.js

I'm often talking with developers using Babylon.js and they're quite happy about it. TypeScript? It's transparent for them, most of them didn't see we're using it for 3 years. Going too fast? We're paying so much attention to backward compatibility that they don't care. We've got so many good features since 2.0, it's often more than enough for them. Optimization is there for a long time and Babylon.js is so stable that big companies are pushing big important sites/app based on that.

Going back to contribution, core engine maintenance, we have a duty of keeping a professional grade framework. This means discipline, rules and good development skills. We can’t accept quick PR, low quality code because “you know, people are afraid of doing something better”.

We're not there to code for free any idea that might look interesting as a first see. Sorry to remind that to everybody but Babylon.js is a FREE OPEN SOURCE project. We’re not making money out of it. We're passionate about it, we love to see people building things on top of it, making some money, driving their business, or simply sharing their passion of 3D with it. This makes us very proud. In the same way, we’re very happy & proud of our community sharing the bugs they’ve found, helping us on the documentation, suggesting interesting enhancements.

But like anybody, our time is precious, we've got kids, family, some of us have very complex situations to manage you can’t even imagine. So, I'm fed up of people complaining it's "too complex" for them where it's obviously not. Most of them are hiding behind that because they want us (and to be honest most of the time @Deltakosh) to code that for them.

@Deltakosh has always been very kind on that but I won’t be anymore on those specific topics.

David

[JohnK]

As a naive and simple minded hobby BJS user who keeps looking at Typescript and saying to myself I really should learn this but can't be bothered then I still think like @adam what is the issue?

TL;DR

So what are my reasons for the agreement?

For a start I can do anything I want with BJS using Javascript, the engine is still accessible and downloadable in Javascript, any code on the Playground accepts Javascript. OK there is one thing I cannot do which is add to the development of the engine directly because I have not learned Typescript. But I can still do it indirectly. Only yesterday I made a suggestion, a very small one, and said I couldn't PR it because of my lack of Typescript and within the hour it was added to BJS by DK. However the suggestion would only require a very few additional lines of code and so DK could do it quite quickly. If I had a bigger idea for BJS then I am sure if I developed it with Javascript with appropriate comments and showed it working and it was seen to benefit the engine  then DK or someone would put it into Typescript.

For me to suggest just the idea for BJS it would have to be a major game changing idea that could be seen by BJS active (on the forum) users to be useful for them all for me to expect anyone to develop the idea instead of me. In a big commercial company if I came to the bosses with a good idea that the bosses liked they would then put me in charge of managing the development and check it at each stage. In other words it would still be my responsibility to see it through. This must be even more true in an open source project, the core team will have projects they think are important and are developing and so will expect a minimum of commitment to idea development from anyone suggesting such an idea.

We have a TV programme here in the UK called 'Dragons Den' where people pitch money making ideas to 5 millionaire business people for investment. Every one who enters the den thinks their idea is so brilliant that they are bound to get investment. The few who do get investment have already put the graft in and shown that their idea is workable as a business.

[MasterK]

What a hot topic.

Thank @Nockawa talk about our game.

I also don't like TS... I'm just numb to complain that...

We'r using pure JS. But I want to change to ES6 and maybe use Babel. 

I don't like use type. it remove JS's freedom. I was using C++ for some years and I like C++ very much. and then i use LUA, I find it really easy to code... and then I use JS, and I know JS is much popular than LUA, and i choose JS as my main language. They are free to write without type or other limit.

I tried three.js for some months and do some demo projects by three.js. And when i found BJS, oh my god, it's definitely the best 3d js engine i've seen. And i soon change to BJS without any concern.(I throw my serveral months work of ThreeJs)

And I haven't think issue about TS. i just use its JS code... It has not much effect.

I have complain about TS. But I think the core team wont change it. so complain is no use..

[unintellisense]

I'm sorry a long time user of BJS is unhappy with the Typescript direction.

But I'm also sorry to hear that core contributors to BJS are getting bummed out from negative feedback, that sucks.

However I will say personally that the fact that BJS is written in Typescript (let alone having decent typings, using TS during my day job I am always excited when a npm module I learn about has @types  ) was a huge attraction for me. I won't try to evangelize anyone who isn't sold on it, but I love the development experience and the safety it affords. I am not quite to the point where I feel like I can contribute meaningfully to BJS (mainly because my 3D skills are poor), but I know that Typescript lets those who are sold on it be much more productive and produce better code as a result. Anyway, my $0.02. Thanks again to everyone who makes BJS possible.

[dbawel]

@davrous and @Deltakosh -

My apologies for any opinions about using Typescript - as Babylon.js is a great framework. I will not comment any further on this, and withdraw my opinions in the future as this is far too hostile an environment for me to continue. I will however continue to post my projects on GitHub and others whom I work with and have been extremely fortunate to have connected with on this fantastic forum. I expected to be permitted to provide personal opinions - especially if I stated so in advance, and differ from others - so in light of the opposite,  I believe I need to leave now; and am out. We (my company) are launching applications at Weta and Lockheed Martin (finally) in the next 30 days and expanding fast - and I truly apriciate all of the efforts everyone is extending to the rapidly expanding framework. I suppose I simply am looking forward to a different future for babylon and a much more extensive coding process in my own opinion. So unfortunately, you won't be hearing from me much in the future, and @davrous you have been extremely instrumental in my evolution into utilizing this framework. So goodbye for now, as I don't believe the proceeding posts are the way to advance the forum. And @davrous - I only have great respect for you. and @Deltakosh - I'll miss you except perhaps I'll continue personal messaging to keep you up to date.

I'll do my best to keep DK abreast of what we're working on, as well as maintain a positive representation within publications for the BJS framework. And soon there will be recognition of the BJS framework on a level not yet known. I've done all I can do...

And @Wingnut, @Dad72, @gryff, and so MANY others - you'll be sorrily missed. Let's try and keep in touch other ways.

Thank you all, and Goodbye...

DB

[gryff]

@dbawel; and so will you David

cheers, gryff