March 13, 2016

N4JS Goes Open Source

Today NumberFour AG announced "N4JS,  An Open-Source Language and IDE for high

N4JS is built for JavaScript developers who seek to build large-scale and maintainable server-side JavaScript as well as Java developers who want to use JavaScript with familiar tool support, early validation and other Java benefitsIt bridges the strengths of JavaScript and Java; the result is a typed JavaScript superset that is dynamic, flexible and type-safe.

N4JS Feature Highlights

The N4JS language and its IDE allow for high-quality JavaScript development of large Node.js projects. Here is a list of some of its features:
  • super set of ECMAScript 5; most of ECMAScript 2015
  • transpiles to V8-compatible ECMAScript (Node.js version 5)
  • Java-like nominal types
  • TypeScript-like structural types
  • generics similar to Java 8
  • async/await (TC39/ECMAScript proposal) with support for legacy code
  • dependency injection using annotations similar to JSR330/Google Guice
  • built-in support for testing, including xUnit-like test framework "mangelhaft"
  • Node.js support: automatically download npms, export to npm

Visit the N4JS webpage to learn more about N4JS and download the latest N4JS IDE.

N4JS for Eclipse-Developers

You are a Eclipse plugin developer looking for a high-quality Java-based ECMAScript parser.
You develop DSLs wich are to be combined with JavaScript environments?

N4JS provides an Xtext-based ECMAScript 2015 parser. The created AST and type model are based on EMF, allowing for integration with other Eclipse modeling tools. Set-up is made easy due to provided Oomph set up script.The N4JS transpiler and the IDE are Eclipse-based.

Visit the N4JS GitHub page to access the source code of the N4JS IDE and the transpiler.

The N4JS Developer Blog

In this blog, the N4JS developer team at NumberFour will write about N4JS. Topics will include

  • new features
  • explanation of existing features
  • discussion of language concepts
  • description of design and implementation of the N4JS IDE and the transpiler

We are looking forward to your feedback! You can either leave comments, post to our mailing list, create issues, or, last but not least, create pull requests!