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Slightly off-topic but I'm curious anyway: Has the tooling for JavaScript improved with TypeScript's adoption? As a back-end developer, I feel like each time I'

Slightly off-topic but I'm curious anyway: Has the tooling for JavaScript improved with TypeScript's adoption? As a back-end developer, I feel like each time I've tried to dig in and start a JavaScript project from scratch has ended with me weeping after spending four hours fighting the tooling. Is there a better way?

tmpz22 6y ago
IMO the issue has to do with linting and editors i.e. "how do I make the yellow squigglies go away" or silent compiler warnings in the console due to several layers of default linting rules again applied by your editor, or your React CLI, or your operating systems package manager. These are very unsexy problems that nobody has been able to solve over the past 5 years because ultimately they are opinionated.
symlinkk 6y ago
Just use create-react-app, it’s not hard.
- crooked-v 6y ago
  I'd personally recommend Next.js instead. It's even more painless, seamlessly handles a lot of other concerns (like routing), and can be used both as an SSR server and to generate purely static HTML bundles.
qudat 6y ago
It's about the same as any other service, the only difference is every web app needs js. Try jumping into a python web service and talk to me about weeping from terrible tooling.
hath995 6y ago
I start all my server side projects in TypeScript lately. There is enough support that it is actually very easy to get started. ts-node, npm @types, and many packages natively supporting ts help. The browser is a crazy environment and adds difficulty, but I find my server code can very strictly typed. The nodejs type definitions are good and if you pick an ORM library with good typescript support then both the in memory data structures and database objects can be well typed. The build step with typescript is basically negated by ts-node for the server. Alternatively, by using tsc --watch and some clever indirection I've enabled hot reloading for most of my server code. So just to be clear, I have types helping me code using vs-code, I save and immediately see changes on the server. If you know the tools well and how to set things up then TS + node can provide a better developer environment than many languages.

tmpz22 6y ago

IMO the issue has to do with linting and editors i.e. "how do I make the yellow squigglies go away" or silent compiler warnings in the console due to several layers of default linting rules again applied by your editor, or your React CLI, or your operating systems package manager. These are very unsexy problems that nobody has been able to solve over the past 5 years because ultimately they are opinionated.

symlinkk 6y ago

Just use create-react-app, it’s not hard.

crooked-v 6y ago
I'd personally recommend Next.js instead. It's even more painless, seamlessly handles a lot of other concerns (like routing), and can be used both as an SSR server and to generate purely static HTML bundles.

qudat 6y ago

It's about the same as any other service, the only difference is every web app needs js. Try jumping into a python web service and talk to me about weeping from terrible tooling.

hath995 6y ago

I start all my server side projects in TypeScript lately. There is enough support that it is actually very easy to get started. ts-node, npm @types, and many packages natively supporting ts help. The browser is a crazy environment and adds difficulty, but I find my server code can very strictly typed. The nodejs type definitions are good and if you pick an ORM library with good typescript support then both the in memory data structures and database objects can be well typed. The build step with typescript is basically negated by ts-node for the server. Alternatively, by using tsc --watch and some clever indirection I've enabled hot reloading for most of my server code. So just to be clear, I have types helping me code using vs-code, I save and immediately see changes on the server. If you know the tools well and how to set things up then TS + node can provide a better developer environment than many languages.