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Is TypeScript a fad or is my manager delusional?
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Id rather quit than go back to pure JavaScript.
But it's so sexy. Strongly typed language? *Scoff
Wow, he's living in 2012 or whatever. A true time traveler.
The developer of Svelte moved from Typescript to JSDoc and explained in depth in an interview (you can find it on youtube). ECMA (the dudes making Javascript/ECMAscript) also started noticing that maybe static typing would be useful and there's a proposal to add typing to it. Whether that's moving forward or not, no idea, but if it were to come to vanillaJS, it's imaginable that typescript would be much less useful than it is now.
I'm not a FE guy so don't write it much, but I'd always rather use typescript if I had to use anything like JS. Our FE guys use typescript at my current job and my previous one as well
JavaScript will implement the things that work out in TypeScript. So… yes and no?
Personally I'd rather use JSDoc in my own projects for type annotations and call it a day. I find TS a bit annoying but that might be because I'm not that familiar with it.
That's just Typescript with extra steps.
Though I have also done this once or twice for single-file projects where I didn't want to deal with actually running tsc. It has some annoying downsides though, e.g. you don't get to have a tsconfig.json and the syntax sucks.
Microsoft had a proposal to allow TS annotations in JavaScript which would have been awesome and fixed the syntax issue.
Looks like it was discussed a year ago and hasn't really made much progress. Seems like lots of people wanting to shoehorn runtime type checking onto it.
Is it? I just have it auto-generate in my IDE with snippets. If I was using TS I would still document using TSDoc anyway. You can use jsconfig.json instead.
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I don't really get the appeal of strongly typed languages. Can't you just use try/catch blocks, and/or use functional programming and return early if the data structure of whatever you're working with isn't what you expected?
I guess it can help older code easier to maintain because the expected data structure is right there, but you could also just include it in a comment above the function.
I personally find TS slows down initial production of a project and raises so many unnecessary errors.
Is there some huge benefit that I'm missing? Because I don't really get the appeal. I mean, I do on some level, but I don't really understand why so many people are absolutely obsessed with TS.
Let me reverse this question and ask what is the benefit of dynamic typing? What is gained from vaguely defined objects?
The purpose of typed languages is to ensure the bare minimum when it comes to safety. That when you're accessing a field of an object that field is real, and that field is always going to be an int or a string.
Try/catch only goes so far before it becomes way more cumbersome than necessary, as is checking every field of an object.
Typescript is an example of a language that does static typing poorly, because by design it has to. It's a quick bandaid fix over an inherently awful language.
I like typescript because my API can generate types for my FE project.
So, if i change my API, i pull in fresh types and fix the errors, and i get in-ide hints for the shape of payloads, responses and events. Not everything is simple CRUD.
Also, if you pull in a library, having types is a godsend
Interesting argument. I have used both typescript and JavaScript, but I spend 99% of my time writing firmware in C, because of this I LOVE strongly typed languages, and I get kinda annoyed/paranoid when my variable COULD change type quietly so end up doing (perhaps too much) type checks etc.
I can say with surety I hate programming in both Typescript and JavaScript, but I definitely hate Typescript less because of the typing.
Having said that, I don't really like the compiled javascript that comes out of the typescript compiler, because it puts some distance between the user and the code and I am all for clarity, especially when people have to go out of their way to not run this code.
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For me, personally, yep; 100%. I've tried at least 3 times to convert, it just gets in my way. I'm way way faster with plain old JS. But I'm also a Rubyist so it is all ducks anyway.
Have you tried slapping your manager?
The only valid argument against typescript is that it is too similar to vanilla JavaScript. It does not go far enough. We need type systems like Ocaml's.
I suppose you can also complain about needing a build step, but I find this silly. There are so many tools that make this easy or automatic.
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I don’t think your manager is sane.
Why on earth would we move back to JavaScript at this point.
Disclosure: I am a TypeScript dev and my boss is fully invested in Microsoft at this point. We use C# .Net and we use Azure and Teams.
He might've watched this video: https://youtu.be/5ChkQKUzDCs
TL;DR: Big projects, like Svelte, Drizzle and Turbo ditched TypeScript
If JavaScript implements type safety then I believe it will go away. If not then it will continue to be used.
Wait until they realise its pointless…
this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2024
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