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I wonder if it's worth migrating from Flow to TypeScript? Flow has been great, but I've just tried to update to the latest version and I'm dealing with a flood

I wonder if it's worth migrating from Flow to TypeScript? Flow has been great, but I've just tried to update to the latest version and I'm dealing with a flood of indecipherable errors, especially from the react-dnd library. Looks like no-one is really maintaining the flow types so I'm on my own, and I don't even know where to start. I also haven't been able to track down some errors, like "Cannot read property 'foo' of undefined". Flow thinks that this variable can never be undefined, and I have no idea how it's happening. It might even be a bug in Immutable.js, but I have no idea. So if TypeScript is more popular and has a bigger community, then maybe it's worth migrating just so I can get more help with these issues. And maybe TypeScript will catch more cases as well.

stephen 8y ago
Yes.
AriaMinaei 8y ago
That's what I did. I switched to TypeScript after two years of being both heavily invested in Flow and advocating it. The reason I initially chose Flow was the fact that their goals were more ambitious (trying to build a sound type system for example). And there were features that Flow had and TypeScript didn't (tagged unions for example). The reason I ultimately switched to TypeScript was that after a couple of years, it had simply caught up and surpassed in the one area it was behind Flow (i.e. expressiveness of the type system and type-level programming), and that it had widened the lead in the areas that it was always better at, like much better tooling, bigger community, core team being more engaged with the community, releasing RCs to smooth out the rough edges, etc. So yes, I switched to TypeScript, and I see that I'm spending less time working around the type system's quirks and more time getting things done. I'm also very much enjoying the fact that I can express types in TS that I never could in Flow. So my codebase has much better type coverage in TypeScript than it did with Flow. [0] https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/advanced-types.html https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/advanced-types....
- davnicwil 8y ago
  > much better tooling If you have the time, would you mind commenting specifically on this? I'm using Flow, rather than TS, for a bunch of reasons you are probably familiar with, but over time I'm just wondering more and more if switching to TS might be worth it just for the tooling. With Flow in VS Code (via the flow-for-vscode plugin), whilst things have slowly and steadily improved over the last 2 years it is still quite a way from 'just works'. I get the impression that the story for TS with VS Code is a lot different, and everything would just work out the box (intellisense, auto import, meaningful error messages tied to line numbers, etc) though I simply haven't yet found the justification to invest the time in migrating just to check this. If I'm wrong and it's the same or only very slightly better, it would obviously have been a time sink for not really much benefit. Do you have any insights or advice on this? Even if you're not a VS Code user, what tools do you use that are better with TS than Flow?
  - alangpierce 8y ago
    If you're already using VS Code, I expect you'll find TypeScript support to be much, much nicer, since VS Code is the not-quite-official editor for TypeScript programming. VS Code is written in TypeScript, and I believe the TypeScript and VS Code teams (both at Microsoft) collaborate with each other to improve the developer experience of the two used in combination. For example, here are some TypeScript release notes showing the improvements to the TS language service and how they manifest in VS Code: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/typescript/2018/05/31/announcing-typescript-2-9/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/typescript/2018/05/31/annou... TypeScript has a nice architecture that provides a language service that can be used by any editor, but my impression is that VS Code is the "flagship" editor that gets these features first. I personally use WebStorm, and I find its TypeScript support much better than its Flow support in various ways (though I haven't tried Flow in a while). Imports get added automatically, autocomplete is fast and has better results, navigation just works, etc. Part of this is historical: WebStorm supported TypeScript first, and was hesitant to support Flow during the long period of time when Flow didn't work on Windows. It now has Flow support, but I think it's just not as polished, and I don't see it come up as much in the release notes.
  - 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
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stephen 8y ago

Yes.

AriaMinaei 8y ago

That's what I did. I switched to TypeScript after two years of being both heavily invested in Flow and advocating it. The reason I initially chose Flow was the fact that their goals were more ambitious (trying to build a sound type system for example). And there were features that Flow had and TypeScript didn't (tagged unions for example). The reason I ultimately switched to TypeScript was that after a couple of years, it had simply caught up and surpassed in the one area it was behind Flow (i.e. expressiveness of the type system and type-level programming), and that it had widened the lead in the areas that it was always better at, like much better tooling, bigger community, core team being more engaged with the community, releasing RCs to smooth out the rough edges, etc. So yes, I switched to TypeScript, and I see that I'm spending less time working around the type system's quirks and more time getting things done. I'm also very much enjoying the fact that I can express types in TS that I never could in Flow. So my codebase has much better type coverage in TypeScript than it did with Flow. [0] https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/advanced-types.html https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/advanced-types....

davnicwil 8y ago
> much better tooling If you have the time, would you mind commenting specifically on this? I'm using Flow, rather than TS, for a bunch of reasons you are probably familiar with, but over time I'm just wondering more and more if switching to TS might be worth it just for the tooling. With Flow in VS Code (via the flow-for-vscode plugin), whilst things have slowly and steadily improved over the last 2 years it is still quite a way from 'just works'. I get the impression that the story for TS with VS Code is a lot different, and everything would just work out the box (intellisense, auto import, meaningful error messages tied to line numbers, etc) though I simply haven't yet found the justification to invest the time in migrating just to check this. If I'm wrong and it's the same or only very slightly better, it would obviously have been a time sink for not really much benefit. Do you have any insights or advice on this? Even if you're not a VS Code user, what tools do you use that are better with TS than Flow?
- alangpierce 8y ago
  If you're already using VS Code, I expect you'll find TypeScript support to be much, much nicer, since VS Code is the not-quite-official editor for TypeScript programming. VS Code is written in TypeScript, and I believe the TypeScript and VS Code teams (both at Microsoft) collaborate with each other to improve the developer experience of the two used in combination. For example, here are some TypeScript release notes showing the improvements to the TS language service and how they manifest in VS Code: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/typescript/2018/05/31/announcing-typescript-2-9/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/typescript/2018/05/31/annou... TypeScript has a nice architecture that provides a language service that can be used by any editor, but my impression is that VS Code is the "flagship" editor that gets these features first. I personally use WebStorm, and I find its TypeScript support much better than its Flow support in various ways (though I haven't tried Flow in a while). Imports get added automatically, autocomplete is fast and has better results, navigation just works, etc. Part of this is historical: WebStorm supported TypeScript first, and was hesitant to support Flow during the long period of time when Flow didn't work on Windows. It now has Flow support, but I think it's just not as polished, and I don't see it come up as much in the release notes.
- 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

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