A tweet by a Microsoft developer has caused a bit of hubbub today after it implied Microsoft was rewriting all of their Office Suite in Javascript. Sean Larkin, Technical Program Manager for Microsoft Web Platform, wrote: (Ive never been able to say this yet)? Well Actually!? All of Office 365 is (almost finished) being completely rewritten in…
A tweet by a Microsoft developer has caused a bit of hubbub today after it implied Microsoft was rewriting all of their Office Suite in Javascript.
Sean Larkin, Technical Program Manager for Microsoft Web Platform, wrote:
This understandably caused a lot of concern regarding performance and the possibility of losing features due to using a less powerful language.
Of course, Windows users are already used to Javascript applications like Microsoft Teams and Slack, which are Electron Apps, and Skype is expected to be soon rewritten in React Native. On the other hand, Teams is not the most performant app, and Office is already resource-hungry, and a Javascript version will likely be 10 times more so.
Fortunately, Windows users need not worry, as Larkin clarified in a post on Reddit .
While Word may never be rewritten in Javascript, it does, however, appear to be the future of most new applications or ones which need to be rewritten from scratch, in our increasingly cross-platform world.
Thanks, Vladimir for the tip.
