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I only gave three examples because it was a single Hacker News comment and I didn't think I should keep a running catalog of every single hole/issue/inconsisten

I only gave three examples because it was a single Hacker News comment and I didn't think I should keep a running catalog of every single hole/issue/inconsistency that I've encountered in the last year of working on a TypeScript project. I gave a few more examples in other comments in this thread. I can go look at the code comments I wrote in my project and come up with a longer list for you if you like. > You gave three examples that seem relatively rare. At work we use TypeScript to type a codebase that was mostly plain JavaScript, and we write TypeScript as plain JavaScript. It does very well its job of offering use better tooling and compile-time guarantees. If you consider it as a way to statically-type existing JS codebases, it's good. If you consider it as a language on its own, it's not great. This is a legitimately genuine question: if you're treating TypeScript as just type annotations on an otherwise regular-old-JavaScript codebase, then why are you using TypeScript rather than just JavaScript with JSDoc comments? Also, I can't quite tell. Are you defending TypeScript's brokenness by suggesting we just don't use all of its advertised features? Isn't that... kind of weak? It's like the joke about going to the doctor: "Doctor, my elbow hurts when I do this." "Well, don't do that!" -- If TypeScript advertises a feature, shouldn't that feature, like, actually work?

Zababa 5y ago
> This is a legitimately genuine question: if you're treating TypeScript as just type annotations on an otherwise regular-old-JavaScript codebase, then why are you using TypeScript rather than just JavaScript with JSDoc comments? TypeScript is way easier to write, and allows to anotate more stuff. We do have some JS that will stays as JS that's anotated with JSDoc, and it's a worse experience than TS. > Also, I can't quite tell. Are you defending TypeScript's brokenness by suggesting we just don't use all of its advertised features? I'm defending the usefulness of the tool, but not its marketing. I think the approach of trying to cover every single usage of JS is not the best, and leads to some complex features and weird edge cases like the ones you mentionned. But for typing plain JS, it works very well. I guess we get a lot of value from TS because static typing is easy when your code wasn't that dynamic in the first place. > If TypeScript advertises a feature, shouldn't that feature, like, actually work? Fair point. I honestly don't know what a codebase that doesn't really benefits from TS looks like, but from your description I can see that their claims are a bit too much. I consider TS as part of a campaign from Microsoft trying to regain mindshare and/or control of developers, and thus always took their claims with a grain of salt.

Zababa 5y ago

> This is a legitimately genuine question: if you're treating TypeScript as just type annotations on an otherwise regular-old-JavaScript codebase, then why are you using TypeScript rather than just JavaScript with JSDoc comments? TypeScript is way easier to write, and allows to anotate more stuff. We do have some JS that will stays as JS that's anotated with JSDoc, and it's a worse experience than TS. > Also, I can't quite tell. Are you defending TypeScript's brokenness by suggesting we just don't use all of its advertised features? I'm defending the usefulness of the tool, but not its marketing. I think the approach of trying to cover every single usage of JS is not the best, and leads to some complex features and weird edge cases like the ones you mentionned. But for typing plain JS, it works very well. I guess we get a lot of value from TS because static typing is easy when your code wasn't that dynamic in the first place. > If TypeScript advertises a feature, shouldn't that feature, like, actually work? Fair point. I honestly don't know what a codebase that doesn't really benefits from TS looks like, but from your description I can see that their claims are a bit too much. I consider TS as part of a campaign from Microsoft trying to regain mindshare and/or control of developers, and thus always took their claims with a grain of salt.