This title is greatly misleading. The article (nor what it's talking about) has nothing to do with a "C# on Javascript" runtime, and that would be ludicrous. Anders is a language designer, so it makes a lot of sense he would use his knowledge to help improve language support for the next big thing. C# has matured; Javascript can still use some work.
I'm hoping this is what ultimately became of Volta: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Live_Labs_Volta" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Live_Labs_Volta</a><p>Basically, you could write C# and mark different segments of the code as being server side and client side. the client side code would be compiled to JavaScript and run in the browser ... and you got full debug support across tiers with the original uncompiled C# source.
Erik Meijer has — for sometime now — advocated treating Javascript as a target language.<p>This fact would be unremarkable except that a few years ago he advocated bringing functional programming to the .NET platform and we ended up with LINQ.
I LOVE C#... its a really great language. I use it every day, and have been doing so for the past 4 years. But the thought of "Microsoft Javascript" scares the shit out of me.
"Microsoft could potentially add some new, interesting features to the JavaScript standard"....<p>Scary! Don't do it Microsoft—don't screw this up again. We spent ten years dealing with your "add some new, interesting features to the ??? standard," and we won't tolerate ten more. Standards are there for a reason. Do as you will, but don't break compatibility with the greater web.
It would make sense for Microsoft to invest in tools to run C# or .NET code in general in JavaScript, because letting people use Microsoft dev tools that they are familiar with (Visual Studio) + letting them generate code that runs on the web without plugins = win.<p>There are already some tools for this, Script# from Microsoft, JSIL and so forth. Would be nice if Microsoft decided to officially support this approach with something very robust.