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Are there big companies still doing untyped JS at scale out there? I'm not a frontend person and I always disliked dynamic type systems. But I vaguely remember

Are there big companies still doing untyped JS at scale out there? I'm not a frontend person and I always disliked dynamic type systems. But I vaguely remember the skepticism when Angular moved to TS. To me it made a lot of sense that most projects at Google, MS and the like would hugely benefit from a language that is kind of a C# on the JS runtime. And in 2021 I see TS pretty much everywhere, but maybe I'm missing something?

jakub_g 6y ago
In my team people object to TS due to a few things: additional complexity, additional build step, build time increase, copy-pasting code around (to console, code snippets etc.) does not work anymore (but last time we talked it was soon after coffeescript -> esmodules migration and I guess everyone was tired of coffeescript which might have affected the mood). There's no unanimous consensus that TS is all gold; some people who are fine with types don't like certain TS implementation details and in fact some devs start saying out loud that sometimes it's very difficult to fight TS with certain constructs. Something that's gaining popularity and what I'm trying lately is using JS + jsdoc annotations more thoroughly, which gives the niceties of TS (when using vscode) without the downsides and heavy compilation step: https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/jsdoc-supported-types.html https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/jsdoc-supported...
- gcmeplz 6y ago
  I loathed typescript at first because of the heavy compilation step, but setting it up to compile only when it was necessary (building for production), and to transpile the rest of the time (running tests, starting a server locally) made a huge difference for our team. A slow compilation step really is a huge cost!
- lucasyvas 6y ago
  While gaining popularity, JS + JSDoc is misguided and not a solution. The compiler is what is required to actually enforce standards within a team - otherwise what you have is a completely informal process. I don't think type docs are useless - on the contrary, they are super helpful while migrating. But I think this trend is indicative of a different issue - what we are really seeing is more of a protest that JS needs native optional type support as soon as possible.
- joquarky 6y ago
  > Something that's gaining popularity and what I'm trying lately is using JS + jsdoc annotations more thoroughly, which gives the niceties of TS (when using vscode) without the downsides and heavy compilation step I'm a big fan of this as well. Webstorm also supports it. It feels like the right balance to me, as it gives me a heads up when things don't match, but doesn't require that I go through the tedium that TS imposes once it touches a project.

jakub_g 6y ago

In my team people object to TS due to a few things: additional complexity, additional build step, build time increase, copy-pasting code around (to console, code snippets etc.) does not work anymore (but last time we talked it was soon after coffeescript -> esmodules migration and I guess everyone was tired of coffeescript which might have affected the mood). There's no unanimous consensus that TS is all gold; some people who are fine with types don't like certain TS implementation details and in fact some devs start saying out loud that sometimes it's very difficult to fight TS with certain constructs. Something that's gaining popularity and what I'm trying lately is using JS + jsdoc annotations more thoroughly, which gives the niceties of TS (when using vscode) without the downsides and heavy compilation step: https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/jsdoc-supported-types.html https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/jsdoc-supported...

gcmeplz 6y ago
I loathed typescript at first because of the heavy compilation step, but setting it up to compile only when it was necessary (building for production), and to transpile the rest of the time (running tests, starting a server locally) made a huge difference for our team. A slow compilation step really is a huge cost!
lucasyvas 6y ago
While gaining popularity, JS + JSDoc is misguided and not a solution. The compiler is what is required to actually enforce standards within a team - otherwise what you have is a completely informal process. I don't think type docs are useless - on the contrary, they are super helpful while migrating. But I think this trend is indicative of a different issue - what we are really seeing is more of a protest that JS needs native optional type support as soon as possible.
joquarky 6y ago
> Something that's gaining popularity and what I'm trying lately is using JS + jsdoc annotations more thoroughly, which gives the niceties of TS (when using vscode) without the downsides and heavy compilation step I'm a big fan of this as well. Webstorm also supports it. It feels like the right balance to me, as it gives me a heads up when things don't match, but doesn't require that I go through the tedium that TS imposes once it touches a project.