Excerpt from above:
"Google surpassed Microsoft to become the second-most valuable technology company. Only its chief rival, Apple, is more valuable than Google among technology companies."
(Wikipedia)
“Some examples, like Dart, portend that JavaScript has fundamental flaws and to support these scenarios requires a ‘clean break’ from JavaScript in both syntax and runtime. We disagree with this point of view.” - Microsoft’s JavaScript team
If Google comes out with Dart, well, then there's no need for that. But it's ok for Microsoft to be secretly working on their own Javascript 2.0. Just sayin' - Why criticize Dart when you've just come with almost the same thing? :)
Also, no "JS will be replaced" threat, no proprietary native VM in IE-prototype to advantage it over other browsers running TypeScript compiled to JS.
But I agree it is another case of two-faced behavior, not in the way you suggest. The IE blog post against Dart rejects a "clean break" and TypeScript builds on ES6. That's consistent.
What is not consistent is how similar parts (but not all) of TypeScript are to ES4, which MS opposed vigorously. Time has passed and ES4 had its own problems, so bygones.
Treating Microsoft as a single, whole, coherent, consistent, and logical entity is the first mistake you make when trying to understand their actions and motivations.
On my blog post, I mentioned a quote by Microsoft originally posted on Wikipedia. Here is the quote:
“Some examples, like Dart, portend that JavaScript has fundamental flaws and to support these scenarios requires a ‘clean break’ from JavaScript in both syntax and runtime. We disagree with this point of view.” - Microsoft’s JavaScript team
Just minutes after I publish my blog post, I read that Microsoft has released "TypeScript".
So, which is it, Microsoft Javascript Team? Ok to criticize Dart, though, right? Nevermind that Microsoft was working on its own Javascript alternative all along?
TypeScript doesn't contradict your quote. It isn't a "clean break" from JavaScript in syntax or runtime: it's a typed superset of JavaScript, unlike Dart which is a similar looking but fundamentally different language. Look at how cumbersome it is to interop with JavaScript from Dart.
In fact, it's closer to JavaScript than _CoffeeScript_, whose slogan is "it's just JavaScript".
TypeScript is what you'd expect from an organization who believes JavaScript is mostly good: a very conservative extension addressing some of the larger pain points (tooling and modularity).
There appears to be a vocal group which suggests their way of doing it is best, even if it involves trudging through configuration documents that remind one of engineering schematics.
Not knocking down the many brilliant developers who work this way, but it seems the simple approach sometimes is the best approach.
I too am looking forward to what this new mobile PHP project will entail.