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Given how fashion-driven the web industry seems to be, my guess is that some new hotness will steal the stage from it in the next few years. I seem to recall se

by Figs 7y ago

Given how fashion-driven the web industry seems to be, my guess is that some new hotness will steal the stage from it in the next few years. I seem to recall seeing tons of posts about CoffeeScript maybe around 6~7 years ago, but it doesn't seem to be very popular any more... Maybe TypeScript will turn out to have more staying power, but my current guess is that something will happen that makes another technology -- probably WebAssembly -- very popular in the next few years and that will kill off a lot of the hype around TypeScript. Then that will itself mostly get killed off by some other technology about 3~5 years after it hits peak popularity, and so on... I could be completely wrong though, of course! Predicting the future is hard. This is just my guess based on handwavey recollection of the last decade and a half of web trends.

quickthrower2 7y ago
Typescript solves the biggest issue I have with using JS which is a lack of a static type system. It however does it in a very pragmatic way, giving the closest experience to Vanilla JS you could hope for. You are not learning a new language like you would be with Elm or Reason etc. It has a powerful type inference system that puts C# to shame in places, and in some places I prefer TS to C#. I don't feel like Typescript is 'hyped'. It is popular because it's damn good. As a programming language alone it could be seen as not too special, but when you see what it's trying to do, get JS developers to use types and not run a mile, then it does a brilliant job.
- siempreb 7y ago
  > Typescript solves the biggest issue I have with using JS which is a lack of a static type system. Hmm, the biggest problem with JS is types? Are you sure? I rarely had issues with types in JS. With JS I just used my trusty dynamic type checker at specific places in the codebase, and testing coverage of course even more importantly. But with TS, the codebases I see on a daily base are mostly a terrible mess of wrong ideas, wrong libraries, wrong constructs, wrong design principles, tooling hell, etc, etc.. Which is IMHO the real issue with JS/TS. For some reason TS proponents seem to live in a world where 'TS solves everything'. For me TS is just writing 20% more code and regularly needing to use the 'any' keyword to avoid spending hours on getting a basic line of code working. Everything I write non-professionally is not TS, I cannot think of 1 single reason to give myself that burden. The best thing TS has given me is even more jobs. With Agile front-end developers spend at least 1 day a week in the meeting room, now with TS they spend 20% of their time left to hassling with types. It's hilarious. Especially all those managers that have no clue what's going on, why front-end development gets slower and slower.
  - mariopal 7y ago
    The biggest problem the parent comment have with JS is not types, as you say, but __a lack of a static type system__. They are things as different as that you can actually have type problems only in a really typed system (as a static type system). Javascript has a very weak type system, and that's the problem. I think you do not understand that static typing serves to solve other problems in the code, not to solve type problems ... it would be like saying that an hypothetical language needs functions to solve function problems ... and then you say that you never had problems with functions in that hypothetical language (ex: assembler, with very primitives "functions", where you have to save data in register before jumping to code in another memory address).
    - Zelphyr 7y ago
      Having a static type system is great but it’s just another tool in the toolbox. I’ve been writing Javascript for 23 years without types and didn’t miss them. They’re great when I have them in other languages but not a deal killer in languages that I don’t. But so many TypeScript fans act as if having types is the be-all and end-all. And, unless I’m mistaken and something has changed recently, I often wonder how many of the TypeScript proponents don’t realize that they’re mostly only getting compile time type checking since the compiler strips away the types after TypeScript gets compiled down to Javascript. Don’t get me wrong; TypeScript is great. But I don’t see it as the savior that others make it out to be.
      - rgoulter 7y ago
        "I often wonder how many of the TypeScript proponents don’t realize that they’re mostly only getting compile time type checking" Surely the biggest benefit from static typing is for static-analysis tooling. (e.g. strong compile-time checks).
        Zelphyr 7y ago
        I don’t disagree but the way people speak about static typing is as if it’s present during the life of the application.
ggregoire 7y ago
CoffeeScript never solved any issues tho. It was just syntactic sugar.

by Figs 7y ago

quickthrower2 7y ago

Typescript solves the biggest issue I have with using JS which is a lack of a static type system. It however does it in a very pragmatic way, giving the closest experience to Vanilla JS you could hope for. You are not learning a new language like you would be with Elm or Reason etc. It has a powerful type inference system that puts C# to shame in places, and in some places I prefer TS to C#. I don't feel like Typescript is 'hyped'. It is popular because it's damn good. As a programming language alone it could be seen as not too special, but when you see what it's trying to do, get JS developers to use types and not run a mile, then it does a brilliant job.

siempreb 7y ago
> Typescript solves the biggest issue I have with using JS which is a lack of a static type system. Hmm, the biggest problem with JS is types? Are you sure? I rarely had issues with types in JS. With JS I just used my trusty dynamic type checker at specific places in the codebase, and testing coverage of course even more importantly. But with TS, the codebases I see on a daily base are mostly a terrible mess of wrong ideas, wrong libraries, wrong constructs, wrong design principles, tooling hell, etc, etc.. Which is IMHO the real issue with JS/TS. For some reason TS proponents seem to live in a world where 'TS solves everything'. For me TS is just writing 20% more code and regularly needing to use the 'any' keyword to avoid spending hours on getting a basic line of code working. Everything I write non-professionally is not TS, I cannot think of 1 single reason to give myself that burden. The best thing TS has given me is even more jobs. With Agile front-end developers spend at least 1 day a week in the meeting room, now with TS they spend 20% of their time left to hassling with types. It's hilarious. Especially all those managers that have no clue what's going on, why front-end development gets slower and slower.
- mariopal 7y ago
  The biggest problem the parent comment have with JS is not types, as you say, but __a lack of a static type system__. They are things as different as that you can actually have type problems only in a really typed system (as a static type system). Javascript has a very weak type system, and that's the problem. I think you do not understand that static typing serves to solve other problems in the code, not to solve type problems ... it would be like saying that an hypothetical language needs functions to solve function problems ... and then you say that you never had problems with functions in that hypothetical language (ex: assembler, with very primitives "functions", where you have to save data in register before jumping to code in another memory address).
  - Zelphyr 7y ago
    Having a static type system is great but it’s just another tool in the toolbox. I’ve been writing Javascript for 23 years without types and didn’t miss them. They’re great when I have them in other languages but not a deal killer in languages that I don’t. But so many TypeScript fans act as if having types is the be-all and end-all. And, unless I’m mistaken and something has changed recently, I often wonder how many of the TypeScript proponents don’t realize that they’re mostly only getting compile time type checking since the compiler strips away the types after TypeScript gets compiled down to Javascript. Don’t get me wrong; TypeScript is great. But I don’t see it as the savior that others make it out to be.
    - rgoulter 7y ago
      "I often wonder how many of the TypeScript proponents don’t realize that they’re mostly only getting compile time type checking" Surely the biggest benefit from static typing is for static-analysis tooling. (e.g. strong compile-time checks).
      - Zelphyr 7y ago
        I don’t disagree but the way people speak about static typing is as if it’s present during the life of the application.

ggregoire 7y ago

CoffeeScript never solved any issues tho. It was just syntactic sugar.