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> How many years have you been doing this? Over a decade, before all these tooling existed. > This post feels like a trivialization of how complicated everyth

> How many years have you been doing this? Over a decade, before all these tooling existed. > This post feels like a trivialization of how complicated everything is, how complexly interlinked build systems are. I know build systems can get very complicated, in fact it's part of my point. Which is that considering you already need to set up a build pipeline, adding typescript support is quite simple. > You know what would be great? If we could just write code. If we didn't have to worry about build pipelines. But that will not be the case. People are not FTPing their dev folders into prod anymore. Even with this change, you will still need a build pipeline, as everybody already does regardless if they use TS or not. > JS used to be extremely low cost & light weight to play with, to get started with. It used to be a joy. It still is, but the barrier to entry is much higher, using modules has never been the same dream as slapping some <script src="http://jquery.com/jquery.js"></script>'s http://jquery.com/jquery.js"></script>'s down on the page (not a real link) and having it just work. This goal is fulfillent to a noble & excellent intent to once again spark joy. I disagree with this. That's probably nostalgia talking. Slapping some script URL and editing with Notepad++, having absolutely no IntelliSense, no errors/squiggly lines and having to F5 a browser after every change, trying to hit the code path in question and check the browser console for errors was awful. Nowadays the editor will tell you what's wrong as you type it, the browser will automatically refresh the code while maintaining state and so on.

rektide 4y ago
Your development bias reflects that of a decade+ wisened & mature developer, well set up, prodyctive with great tools in your toolbelt. I think you conflate the development environment with the hypermedium. You stick lo-fi tools with shame, but you're not actually talking to the language & it's lightweight versaility & hackability. You're not talking to the editability, the malleability, & simplicity of the medium as it was, and which, if we can do just a little bit of healing, can be again. > Even with this change, you will still need a build pipeline Will we? Why? I tend to wager a decent static webserver (especially one that has decent cimpression built in) will be a very fine deploy target for many again, soon. ESM, early-hints, http3... it could happen. Yeah we probably should strip comments & these type annotations, but need to? Meh. I think we fret too much about the small stuff & havent spent nearly enough time conisdering incremental loading architectures & better use of service workers. The endless pish for optimizing what we have has been a race of folly ignoring the real peaks around us daring us to be summited. JS can & should be less build intensive. Non-build module-using js was the high fantasy we were driving for a decade ago, when the idea of modules was new, & it's been slow, but that objective was there for really good & importamt reasons. A js which is naturally accessible, which is evident & real, is good for humanity & how the web reconnects with itself as a hypermedium, as more than just another shitty developer app-dev toolbox for nerds like us. We can be better. We can make the source real again.
- redox99 4y ago
  > Will we? Why? I tend to wager a decent static webserver (especially one that has decent cimpression built in) will be a very fine deploy target for many again, soon. ESM, early-hints, http3... it could happen. Yeah we probably should strip comments & these type annotations, but need to? Meh. I think we fret too much about the small stuff & havent spent nearly enough time conisdering incremental loading architectures & better use of service workers. The endless pish for optimizing what we have has been a race of folly ignoring the real peaks around us daring us to be summited. Even with http3 and so on, serving node_modules which almost always is 100k+ files would be awful. And of course, yes, you don't need npm. But I don't see people going back to the jquery days of having a single o no dependencies. I guess the point stands for new people learning web development who are only playing on localhost and don't care yet about having something good enough for prod. But I don't think people who are at that stage should worry about typescript. If they did and didn't want a build pipeline, they would just manually run tsc. Is adding a new feature to JS just so that beginners who want to use TS don't need to run tsc worth it? IMO no.

rektide 4y ago

Your development bias reflects that of a decade+ wisened & mature developer, well set up, prodyctive with great tools in your toolbelt. I think you conflate the development environment with the hypermedium. You stick lo-fi tools with shame, but you're not actually talking to the language & it's lightweight versaility & hackability. You're not talking to the editability, the malleability, & simplicity of the medium as it was, and which, if we can do just a little bit of healing, can be again. > Even with this change, you will still need a build pipeline Will we? Why? I tend to wager a decent static webserver (especially one that has decent cimpression built in) will be a very fine deploy target for many again, soon. ESM, early-hints, http3... it could happen. Yeah we probably should strip comments & these type annotations, but need to? Meh. I think we fret too much about the small stuff & havent spent nearly enough time conisdering incremental loading architectures & better use of service workers. The endless pish for optimizing what we have has been a race of folly ignoring the real peaks around us daring us to be summited. JS can & should be less build intensive. Non-build module-using js was the high fantasy we were driving for a decade ago, when the idea of modules was new, & it's been slow, but that objective was there for really good & importamt reasons. A js which is naturally accessible, which is evident & real, is good for humanity & how the web reconnects with itself as a hypermedium, as more than just another shitty developer app-dev toolbox for nerds like us. We can be better. We can make the source real again.

redox99 4y ago
> Will we? Why? I tend to wager a decent static webserver (especially one that has decent cimpression built in) will be a very fine deploy target for many again, soon. ESM, early-hints, http3... it could happen. Yeah we probably should strip comments & these type annotations, but need to? Meh. I think we fret too much about the small stuff & havent spent nearly enough time conisdering incremental loading architectures & better use of service workers. The endless pish for optimizing what we have has been a race of folly ignoring the real peaks around us daring us to be summited. Even with http3 and so on, serving node_modules which almost always is 100k+ files would be awful. And of course, yes, you don't need npm. But I don't see people going back to the jquery days of having a single o no dependencies. I guess the point stands for new people learning web development who are only playing on localhost and don't care yet about having something good enough for prod. But I don't think people who are at that stage should worry about typescript. If they did and didn't want a build pipeline, they would just manually run tsc. Is adding a new feature to JS just so that beginners who want to use TS don't need to run tsc worth it? IMO no.