4 ms·

TS really stands out as amazing. It’s realized a lot of the promise of strong typing.

malcolmgreaves 3y ago
I agree that TypeScript is quite amazing. And that it's indeed improved the programs created that run in the browser or on `node`. However, I wanted to point out something that I think often gets overlooked when folks talk about TypeScript. I'd argue that TS has realized it for the web programming masses, who usually don't have any computer science education and thus are unaware of computing fundamentals such as types. TS hasn't realized the promise of strong typing only because it has been quite late to the game, so to speak. I do think I understand where you're coming from. Web programmers are the largest group of programming-related professionals. Bringing CS wins to this large group absolutely does bring the largest gains and impact to industry. There have been many programming languages created decades before TypeScript that have realized the promise of strong typing. Unfortunately, I think this road took too long. Collectively, people have known about these ideas since John Backus's 1977 Turing Award Lecture [1] -- "Can Programming Be Liberated from the von Neumann Style? A Functional Style and Its Algebra of Programs" Anyways, I digress. Hopefully this was insightful! Have a great day :) [1] https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/359576.359579 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/359576.359579
- anthk 3y ago
  https://hypercubed.github.io/joy/joy.html https://hypercubed.github.io/joy/joy.html
cgh 3y ago
How so? It looks a lot like a less-rich Java, whose type system has existed for literally decades. In fact, the generics syntax and type erasure was directly influenced by Java.
- coev 3y ago
  More like indirectly influenced by Java by way of C# (Anders Hejlsberg designed both C# and TS)
- ildjarn 3y ago
  Typescript has far more powerful type constructs than Java.
  - za3faran 3y ago
    Such as?
    - ildjarn 3y ago
      https://github.com/codemix/ts-sql https://github.com/codemix/ts-sql
      - za3faran 3y ago
        Quite nifty, but I still wouldn't call it far more powerful. Take a look at https://checkerframework.org/ https://checkerframework.org/ for example.
- pionar 3y ago
  I disagree. The language was probably more inspired by C#, which is itself inspired by Java. Type erasure is just part of transpiling to JS.
- acchow 3y ago
  Tho Typescript does have structural types, mapped types, union types, optional types, type aliases..... Bunch of useful type features.
- skybrian 3y ago
  I haven’t used Java in many years, but TypeScript’s structural types give it a different flavor than I remember from Java. Unlike in Java, most of the types I define aren’t classes or interfaces. It’s just data that has an expected shape. Check out the design of Zod, for example. I have a bunch of Zod types for the validation of incoming JSON messages. This automatically generates the corresponding TypeScript types through the magic of type inference. It’s quite easy to create discriminated unions, which are just structs where one field has a fixed value.
  - pyuser583 3y ago
    In functional programming, a type is just a function that returns a list of possible values. It’s not a class.
    - skybrian 3y ago
      Conceptually, you can think of a type as a set of values, but no, it’s not how static type-checking is implemented. Some sets are very large (consider the set of all JSON values) and enumerating them isn’t useful.
    - dragonwriter 3y ago
      > In functional programming, a type is just a function that returns a list of possible values Its literally not; there may be a language which does this or something close (actually, I’ve seen narrow, purpose-focussed relational languages where this is the case, and all types are enumerable), but it's definitely not generally the case in functional languages.
ildjarn 3y ago
TS has a powerful type system that behaves in strange and counter intuitive ways, particular for people coming from JS. It doesn’t even have a spec, really. I would prefer something less powerful but more predictable, personally.

I agree that TypeScript is quite amazing. And that it's indeed improved the programs created that run in the browser or on `node`. However, I wanted to point out something that I think often gets overlooked when folks talk about TypeScript. I'd argue that TS has realized it for the web programming masses, who usually don't have any computer science education and thus are unaware of computing fundamentals such as types. TS hasn't realized the promise of strong typing only because it has been quite late to the game, so to speak. I do think I understand where you're coming from. Web programmers are the largest group of programming-related professionals. Bringing CS wins to this large group absolutely does bring the largest gains and impact to industry. There have been many programming languages created decades before TypeScript that have realized the promise of strong typing. Unfortunately, I think this road took too long. Collectively, people have known about these ideas since John Backus's 1977 Turing Award Lecture [1] -- "Can Programming Be Liberated from the von Neumann Style? A Functional Style and Its Algebra of Programs" Anyways, I digress. Hopefully this was insightful! Have a great day :) [1] https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/359576.359579 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/359576.359579

anthk 3y ago
https://hypercubed.github.io/joy/joy.html https://hypercubed.github.io/joy/joy.html

cgh 3y ago

How so? It looks a lot like a less-rich Java, whose type system has existed for literally decades. In fact, the generics syntax and type erasure was directly influenced by Java.

coev 3y ago
More like indirectly influenced by Java by way of C# (Anders Hejlsberg designed both C# and TS)
ildjarn 3y ago
Typescript has far more powerful type constructs than Java.
- za3faran 3y ago
  Such as?
  - ildjarn 3y ago
    https://github.com/codemix/ts-sql https://github.com/codemix/ts-sql
    - za3faran 3y ago
      Quite nifty, but I still wouldn't call it far more powerful. Take a look at https://checkerframework.org/ https://checkerframework.org/ for example.
pionar 3y ago
I disagree. The language was probably more inspired by C#, which is itself inspired by Java. Type erasure is just part of transpiling to JS.
acchow 3y ago
Tho Typescript does have structural types, mapped types, union types, optional types, type aliases..... Bunch of useful type features.
skybrian 3y ago
I haven’t used Java in many years, but TypeScript’s structural types give it a different flavor than I remember from Java. Unlike in Java, most of the types I define aren’t classes or interfaces. It’s just data that has an expected shape. Check out the design of Zod, for example. I have a bunch of Zod types for the validation of incoming JSON messages. This automatically generates the corresponding TypeScript types through the magic of type inference. It’s quite easy to create discriminated unions, which are just structs where one field has a fixed value.
- pyuser583 3y ago
  In functional programming, a type is just a function that returns a list of possible values. It’s not a class.
  - skybrian 3y ago
    Conceptually, you can think of a type as a set of values, but no, it’s not how static type-checking is implemented. Some sets are very large (consider the set of all JSON values) and enumerating them isn’t useful.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > In functional programming, a type is just a function that returns a list of possible values Its literally not; there may be a language which does this or something close (actually, I’ve seen narrow, purpose-focussed relational languages where this is the case, and all types are enumerable), but it's definitely not generally the case in functional languages.

ildjarn 3y ago

TS has a powerful type system that behaves in strange and counter intuitive ways, particular for people coming from JS. It doesn’t even have a spec, really. I would prefer something less powerful but more predictable, personally.