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TBH the hardest thing for a long time about Node backend engineers isn't that there isn't great frameworks but a lot of times people choose node for the above u

TBH the hardest thing for a long time about Node backend engineers isn't that there isn't great frameworks but a lot of times people choose node for the above use case. So developers who write Node backends were some breed of frontend people who chose node because they didn't want to learn another language as opposed to learning the language because it was the best tool for the job. Anyways recently the typescript backend scene is developing a lot better than even a few years ago. stuff like NextJS becoming more popular and more stable better backend typescript frameworks coming out. My comment was mostly aimed at using backend languages for frontend as opposed to necessarily targeting Typescript

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
Yeah, I agree with that. When I first saw the title on the article I thought "ergh...", because while I think Go is a fine language that really excels in some contexts, the number of developers who are familiar with "Go for the front end" is vanishingly small. My initial distaste was tempered by the fact that I thought they at least had a good reason for wanting to eliminate "need to code twice" for their different front ends. FWIW I was a primarily a Java server developer for the first ~15 years of my career, then switched to Node and really loved it. It was at that point that I fell into the benefits of my "Typescript everywhere" mantra because it solved so many problems I had seen with the common setup of Java on the backend and Javascript with the rise of SPAs on the front end.
- JoeyJoJoJr 2y ago
  On my company’s latest project we are using Spring Boot on the backend with Typescript and React on the front-end. We are using Swagger for API specs which means we can generate type safe Typescript code for the front-end, including schemas for Zod and Tanstack query functions. With this codegen I can’t see many benefits to using Typescript on the backend, although the project is a rather standard CRUD app. I can understand why you might not want to use Java, but surely there are better backend choices than Java or Node? I am curious - could you explain how you are benefiting from using Typescript on both back and front end?
  - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
    I replied in another comment here, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43009065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43009065. When I've posted this before, the main objections I've got have usually been from the perspective on individual developers, or stuff like "you can't actually share a ton of code between front-end and back-end". That's not my primary point (though there are some places where it is nice to share code, e.g. input validation that you may want to run on the client for user experience/performance reasons but then that you also need to run on the backend for security reasons). The biggest benefit I've seen is in team dynamics which results in bugs getting fixed faster and new features getting added faster because it's easier for team members to "cross" backend/frontend boundaries.

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago

Yeah, I agree with that. When I first saw the title on the article I thought "ergh...", because while I think Go is a fine language that really excels in some contexts, the number of developers who are familiar with "Go for the front end" is vanishingly small. My initial distaste was tempered by the fact that I thought they at least had a good reason for wanting to eliminate "need to code twice" for their different front ends. FWIW I was a primarily a Java server developer for the first ~15 years of my career, then switched to Node and really loved it. It was at that point that I fell into the benefits of my "Typescript everywhere" mantra because it solved so many problems I had seen with the common setup of Java on the backend and Javascript with the rise of SPAs on the front end.

JoeyJoJoJr 2y ago
On my company’s latest project we are using Spring Boot on the backend with Typescript and React on the front-end. We are using Swagger for API specs which means we can generate type safe Typescript code for the front-end, including schemas for Zod and Tanstack query functions. With this codegen I can’t see many benefits to using Typescript on the backend, although the project is a rather standard CRUD app. I can understand why you might not want to use Java, but surely there are better backend choices than Java or Node? I am curious - could you explain how you are benefiting from using Typescript on both back and front end?
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  I replied in another comment here, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43009065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43009065. When I've posted this before, the main objections I've got have usually been from the perspective on individual developers, or stuff like "you can't actually share a ton of code between front-end and back-end". That's not my primary point (though there are some places where it is nice to share code, e.g. input validation that you may want to run on the client for user experience/performance reasons but then that you also need to run on the backend for security reasons). The biggest benefit I've seen is in team dynamics which results in bugs getting fixed faster and new features getting added faster because it's easier for team members to "cross" backend/frontend boundaries.