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I had the opposite experience. I like languages with static types a lot and I used to be a fan of TypeScript. After using it for a few OSS projects and profess

I had the opposite experience. I like languages with static types a lot and I used to be a fan of TypeScript. After using it for a few OSS projects and professionally, I came to the conclusion that, if I need types, I'll use a real statically typed language if I need types and JS for what doesn't matter. TypeScript works but: - it's a major pain to work with if your dependencies don't have type definitions - if another developer in your codebase left a hole somewhere you won't be able to rely on your types, you'll get runtime errors and you basically ruin the capability to reason around your code - it's slow (hopefully deno's efforts will bring some news in that regard) TL;DR: TypeScript should be much stricter and don't compromise with JS.

gagege 6y ago
Yep. My experience as well. In a large project, the types often end up being pointless since you can easily just ignore them at any time, and the "compiled" JS will just happily go along with it all. Eventually I hit a point where I wonder why we're even bothering using types.
deckard1 6y ago
bingo. TypeScript had absolutely no excuse to keep JavaScript, beyond the misguided idea that because so many JavaScript developers exist that it should be easy to get them to learn types. First, they introduced a compiler. At that point, you may as well toss out JavaScript for a better language that actually has nice type syntax. TypeScript syntax is horrible. It makes JavaScript completely unreadable in many places. Second, JavaScript developers tend to be the type that have never learned another language beyond JavaScript. They come from bootcamps and elsewhere that only teaches JavaScript and that's all these developers know. They do not have the experience necessary to not make a mess of TypeScript's structural typing system. You'll end up with incoherent ad hoc types all over the place. You still have JavaScript's ad hoc data flow all over the place, but now you have TypeScript yelling at you while trying to formalize the mess and failing badly at it. What I find is that often when people say they like TypeScript they really mean they like VSCode.
cryptica 6y ago
TypeScript is unnecessary. Type incompatibility is not a big problem at all... It's the easiest kind of bug to find and fix. The simplest tests will typically catch those bugs even when the tests are not explicitly looking for them. On the other hand, issues related to parallel async state mutations which involve race conditions are very common in complex projects and are very challenging to debug. Type incompatibility issues are a walk in the park. You don't need a type checker for that. Just because your boss is incontinent doesn't mean that you also need to wear an adult diaper!

gagege 6y ago

Yep. My experience as well. In a large project, the types often end up being pointless since you can easily just ignore them at any time, and the "compiled" JS will just happily go along with it all. Eventually I hit a point where I wonder why we're even bothering using types.

deckard1 6y ago

bingo. TypeScript had absolutely no excuse to keep JavaScript, beyond the misguided idea that because so many JavaScript developers exist that it should be easy to get them to learn types. First, they introduced a compiler. At that point, you may as well toss out JavaScript for a better language that actually has nice type syntax. TypeScript syntax is horrible. It makes JavaScript completely unreadable in many places. Second, JavaScript developers tend to be the type that have never learned another language beyond JavaScript. They come from bootcamps and elsewhere that only teaches JavaScript and that's all these developers know. They do not have the experience necessary to not make a mess of TypeScript's structural typing system. You'll end up with incoherent ad hoc types all over the place. You still have JavaScript's ad hoc data flow all over the place, but now you have TypeScript yelling at you while trying to formalize the mess and failing badly at it. What I find is that often when people say they like TypeScript they really mean they like VSCode.

cryptica 6y ago

TypeScript is unnecessary. Type incompatibility is not a big problem at all... It's the easiest kind of bug to find and fix. The simplest tests will typically catch those bugs even when the tests are not explicitly looking for them. On the other hand, issues related to parallel async state mutations which involve race conditions are very common in complex projects and are very challenging to debug. Type incompatibility issues are a walk in the park. You don't need a type checker for that. Just because your boss is incontinent doesn't mean that you also need to wear an adult diaper!