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Ask HN: Is TypeScript worth it?

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Re: Ask HN: Is TypeScript worth it?

#461

Post by johannboehme »

mountainriver wrote: post #395
tomxor wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find it also helps indirectly by making clever code harder to write. The dynamic nature of JavaScript encourages a degree of cleverness and meta-programming that makes things harder to understand. While you can do the same in TypeScript, making the complier happy makes it much harder to do so, which encourages more straightforward code. Interesting. Not having to define types makes JS feel very fluid to me when u…

I just can’t get behind the dynamic typing arguments in the slightest anymore. It doesn’t take any time to type your code. We’re talking seconds on the hour, and the benefits are huge

It's not necessarily about the time it takes to type the type definitions. static typing leads to developers trying to represent the "real" world in a bunch of categories and arbitrary boxes. Thats not necessarily a good thing because you can loose much time in bike shedding discussions like "Is a person class still a valid person class if it has no Surname" which do not provide actual value to your product. Recommended watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR5WdGrpoug

Re: Ask HN: Is TypeScript worth it?

#462

Post by johannboehme »

IshKebab wrote: post #402
dunno7456 wrote: post #282

I worked in two different team in two different companies where a full rewrite of the core system was done in typescript. The technology itself had few issues like compilation time and inability to run the application locally because of reasons. The new systems were so complicated that everything ended in neverending bike shedding. The people pushing for "everything to be written in typescript including other teams t…

> were a very inflexible crowd Yes because Typescript is so obviously good . It's like saying "the pro-seatbelt people are a very inflexible crowd". Well duh! Typescript compile time is not great but you can set things up so it doesn't block running (i.e. you ignore errors until you want to fix them). There's no issue with running Typescript locally. > It's soul crushing... It's soul crushing to work with people who…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR5WdGrpoug Static typing is not "obviously good" The comparison is flawed. There are no advantages to driving without a seatbelt, but there are pros and cons to dynamic typing.

Re: Ask HN: Is TypeScript worth it?

#463

Post by fennecfoxy »

I've used TS since it came out and it's always been great.

There are a few quibbles with TS devs over not implementing certain ideas because it breaks out of the JS superset paradigm, which really makes me wish we had a TS++ or TS# that broke this on purpose but hey.

It does have a lot of problems, but it usually comes down to pre-existing ones. i: yup but like, isn't that true of every framework/language/library? But less so for TS given that it's open source

ii: this is the JS ecosystem in a nutshell, but I think you'll find with any similarly sized ecosystem, built from the thankless efforts of a bunch of amazing individuals in the community that this is true. If you want Oracle level support/docu you gotta pay big $$$ for it

iii: this is very true and my advice to other devs I work with is usually to read more towards the bottom of the error. TS currently gives you a lot of context for the error, much of which may be but isn't always useful.

iv: realistically we have been waiting for a very long time for node.js/browsers to be able to run TS natively. I would be a huge fan of this. Transpilation on large projects can take a good amount of time, but I'd say the larger the project the _better_ the advantage you will have using TS; sure you'll have to deal with trans times but TS can really save your butt when making a breaking change in a large project.

I've used Node.JS pretty much my whole career, whilst I've done a lot of stuff in C# and C/embedded as well my mainstay has been Node & JS and as soon as I could use it, TS.

I remember callback hell, I remember adding console logs every few lines to figure out what the fuck is going on, I remember sitting in the debugger trying to make sense of why various vaguely connected chunks of code weren't working properly. I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.

Re: Ask HN: Is TypeScript worth it?

#464

Post by bborud »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #389
bborud wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Statically typed languages are known to lead to slower initial > development times I hear people saying that, but I'm not sure I buy it. Is there any research that supports that, and if so, for which languages? Also, what does "initial development" mean here? The first day, week, month, year? And unless your project is trivial, isn't it somewhat important that as much of the initial work as possible provides a soli…

PDF: https://www.ics.uci.edu/~jajones/INF102-S18/readings/23_hane... see conclusions intuitively static typing is less forgiving and forces programmers to write code in a specific form think how much time has been wasted writing Java boilerplate code.

To be honest, that looked a bit thin. And the most productivity-killing Java boilerplate is hardly due to its static typing but rather the baroque style required by lots of frameworks. It is important to differentiate between language and how people tend to use it.

Re: Ask HN: Is TypeScript worth it?

#465

Post by tmm84 »

bestest wrote: post #227

I've been working with JavaScript for 20 years. And 5 years with TypeScript. And, well. I still am not convinced. Too much overhead for me. I really dislike typing obvious things and boilerplate. Probably my fluency with JS is to blame. I don't need to see types and autocompletion. If I really need to — I just go to the source and inspect the source code, that is how I familiarise myself with the interface. I also th…

I feel like my JS skills are way above average so I agree with you that if you have the chops then typing obvious stuff just wastes time. However, new developers or those unfamiliar with the ins and outs of JS need help to understand what are they working with. I also feel when a project gets really big/complicated then TS starts to help convey data structures but I think at that point TS becomes the documentation you should have been writing all along. However, the one thing I really don't enjoy about TS is when some library is typed it'll be very strict to the point that valid JS isn't allowed and the invocation of telling TS not to check needs to added for the segment which in turn looks like a code smell. Or the types get to meta-program oriented and I have to start inserting types everywhere instead of them being inferred.

Re: Ask HN: Is TypeScript worth it?

#466

Post by ryanwheale »

jemmyw wrote: post #286
DanRosenwasser wrote: post #61

Hi there! I work on the TypeScript team and I respect your feedback. Of course I do think TypeScript is worth it, and I'll try to address some of the points you've raised with my thoughts. i. Dependency management is indeed frustrating. TypeScript doesn't create a new major version for every more-advanced check. In cases where inference might improve or new analyses are added, we run the risk of affecting existing bu…

If you're just looking for general feedback, constructor typing has made my life really hard trying to type an existing JS library. In a JS object instance like `const user = new User()` you can call `this.constructor.staticMethod()` and it calls `staticMethod()` on `User` or up the inheritance chain. But TS doesn't type `.constructor` so you're out of luck. In the simple case you call `User.staticMethod()` but that…

> you can call `this.constructor.staticMethod()` and it calls `staticMethod()` on `User` or up the inheritance chain.

This is where I have come to like typescript. 4 years ago, I would have agreed with you, but TS have moved me into a world where I wouldn't write that kind of code any more, and it honestly makes me sick to look at.

Instead I would just do `User.staticMethod` because this accomplishes several things:

  - super classes shouldn't know about inheriting classes. If they do, TS gives you interfaces and abstract classes for this purpose.
  - it still crawls up the proto chain, so the inheriting class doesn't need to know about every super class
  - no risk in `this` pointing to something unintentional (if someone calls or apply's your method)
  - shorter code, easier to read IMO, especially for less experienced devs

Re: Ask HN: Is TypeScript worth it?

#467

Post by mountainriver »

johannboehme wrote: post #461
mountainriver wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just can’t get behind the dynamic typing arguments in the slightest anymore. It doesn’t take any time to type your code. We’re talking seconds on the hour, and the benefits are huge

It's not necessarily about the time it takes to type the type definitions. static typing leads to developers trying to represent the "real" world in a bunch of categories and arbitrary boxes. Thats not necessarily a good thing because you can loose much time in bike shedding discussions like "Is a person class still a valid person class if it has no Surname" which do not provide actual value to your product. Recommen…

> "Is a person class still a valid person class if it has no Surname"

At least you then know the answer to this while writing code rather than at test time, or worse in prod

Re: Ask HN: Is TypeScript worth it?

#468

Post by jemmyw »

ryanwheale wrote: post #466
jemmyw wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're just looking for general feedback, constructor typing has made my life really hard trying to type an existing JS library. In a JS object instance like `const user = new User()` you can call `this.constructor.staticMethod()` and it calls `staticMethod()` on `User` or up the inheritance chain. But TS doesn't type `.constructor` so you're out of luck. In the simple case you call `User.staticMethod()` but that…

> you can call `this.constructor.staticMethod()` and it calls `staticMethod()` on `User` or up the inheritance chain. This is where I have come to like typescript. 4 years ago, I would have agreed with you, but TS have moved me into a world where I wouldn't write that kind of code any more, and it honestly makes me sick to look at. Instead I would just do `User.staticMethod` because this accomplishes several things:…

I might agree with you but sometimes we have to type up JS code that is written in different styles to what we'd personally prefer. TS should (a) let me generate the types that are used in JS. There are areas like proxies where that's just not possible, but in this case it feels like there's a disparity between TS and JS over classes. (b) I want to work with this code in my editor without red lines all over the place on perfectly valid code.

super classes don't need to 'know' about the inheriting classes for static inheritance to work. i.e. here is a simplified problem in the library I'm trying to add types to:

superclass:

  static hasField(name) { return false }
  constructor() {
    if(this.constructor.hasField('id')) { ... }
  }
subclass:

  static hasField(name) { if(name === 'id') return true; }
(it doesn't really look like that but you get the idea). That just works in JS, but in TS you get `Property 'hasField' does not exist on type 'Function'`. In the TS definition there are a couple of ways I can trick it to return the right thing for `this.constructor` but if I'm looking at a JS file in vscode with TS' checkJs flag on then this pattern should just work in my opinion.

edit: And I don't think I should have to trick it, that makes the definition harder to read and essentially wrong somehow.

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