None of the Javascript alternatives (except maybe CoffeeScript) really gained any traction until Typescript did. Just because something is hard doesn't mean that it shouldn't be attempted, and just because something is unlikely to succeed doesn't mean that it is a lost cause. To look at a language like SQL and say "meh, that's good enough" is crazy to me. I estimate that a widely-adopted good SQL alternative could have saved me over 1000 hours over the last 10 years.
TypeScript is backward compatible with JavaScript. It means there is pretty much zero investment required to get started with TypeScript. Refactoring existing SQL codebases to Malfoy would have cost me more than 1000 hours over the last ten years.
The problem with SQL alternatives is that they tend to lack features once you get beyond the shiny examples on their documentation pages.
