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Hopefully I can avoid stacks tainted by this kind of unnecessary “flexibility” until the end of my programming career. Typescript was considered the “fix all pr

by dep_b 6y ago

Hopefully I can avoid stacks tainted by this kind of unnecessary “flexibility” until the end of my programming career. Typescript was considered the “fix all problems with JavaScript” language but I poked in its type system within the first 10 minutes of using it.

notapenny 6y ago
The thing is, most of that flexibility or any of the things that could be considered quirks/flaws of the language have been around for a long time and probably will be due to browser compatibility issues. It isn't great, but it is what it is. I enjoy TS and for web applications I wouldn't want to do without it, but it for sure isn't the "end all" since it still needs to work with those issues. Ultimately though in the case of some of the examples, a type system in a language with optional parameters doesn't excuse you from having to use your brain. Especially if you're the kind of developer who thinks testing your code is just unnecessary.
ragnese 6y ago
Yeah, TypeScript sounds great, but I quickly became a skeptic. JavaScript is a lost cause. There cannot be a JavaScript++ that will be reasonably safe. I'm not a frontend guy, but I truly don't know what I'd do with a frontend project. ClojureScript? Elm? OCaml? I would even do JavaScript with JSDoc comments before I'd bother doing TypeScript.
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  What do you make of Dart?
  - ragnese 6y ago
    Good question. I've only seen cursory information about Dart, so I can't really have an opinion. I'd be willing to try it, though. From a quick web search, it looks like JavaScript interop isn't totally frictionless, which is probably a good thing to- as crazy as that may sound. But it looks like it does rely on making up a type signature for the JS you call into. I assume there must be a way to use TypeScript signature files, too. It's interesting. I'd like to look into it some time.

by dep_b 6y ago

notapenny 6y ago

The thing is, most of that flexibility or any of the things that could be considered quirks/flaws of the language have been around for a long time and probably will be due to browser compatibility issues. It isn't great, but it is what it is. I enjoy TS and for web applications I wouldn't want to do without it, but it for sure isn't the "end all" since it still needs to work with those issues. Ultimately though in the case of some of the examples, a type system in a language with optional parameters doesn't excuse you from having to use your brain. Especially if you're the kind of developer who thinks testing your code is just unnecessary.

ragnese 6y ago

Yeah, TypeScript sounds great, but I quickly became a skeptic. JavaScript is a lost cause. There cannot be a JavaScript++ that will be reasonably safe. I'm not a frontend guy, but I truly don't know what I'd do with a frontend project. ClojureScript? Elm? OCaml? I would even do JavaScript with JSDoc comments before I'd bother doing TypeScript.

MaxBarraclough 6y ago
What do you make of Dart?
- ragnese 6y ago
  Good question. I've only seen cursory information about Dart, so I can't really have an opinion. I'd be willing to try it, though. From a quick web search, it looks like JavaScript interop isn't totally frictionless, which is probably a good thing to- as crazy as that may sound. But it looks like it does rely on making up a type signature for the JS you call into. I assume there must be a way to use TypeScript signature files, too. It's interesting. I'd like to look into it some time.