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Ask HN: Is TypeScript worth it?

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Re: Ask HN: Is TypeScript worth it?

#81

Post by 8note »

cobertos wrote: post #47
kitsunesoba wrote: post #32

My use case is a bit odd, but I've been using it for small personal web projects — so small that no dependencies are being pulled in and bare tsc is being used in place of a bundler — and as someone who doesn't have all of the ins/outs and do's/don'ts of JavaScript committed to memory (the vast majority of code I write is Swift or Kotlin) it's wonderful to have something catching errors before I save and reload the b…

Same here, I've found it very useful in projects where I don't have a lot of dependencies. In another project with more exotic dependencies, it has become a hassle somewhat. I've found learning the .d.ts syntax to help easily get out of a situation, but it was a learning curve I still run into sometimes.

I find that I just make the .d.ts files any types

I could document types for that module, but I don't, and instead assume types as the output of code I have that interacts with them

Re: Ask HN: Is TypeScript worth it?

#82

Post by 8note »

andirk wrote: post #71
llanowarelves wrote: post #21

I'd say for most people, beyond small scripts/cli/micro-microservices, the ceremony of setup/environment overhead for it is worth it, and continually pays dividends. You can usually copy-paste a common config file around to bootstrap. Most of your (pretty good actually) critique are points to make the least-bad way of doing JavaScript even better, and I'd agree could be improved. Others have taken notice. "Native sup…

I haven't found much agreement, or at least to the extent I believe it, that Javascript and HTML and CSS have all been shoehorned and built upon completely beyond their original specs.

Those sound like the least controversial opinions ever.

What's nice is that despite looking ugly, those shoe horns have done a pretty good job, and they all make effective tools for building useful stuff, and that stuff can be built by people who aren't very good at building stuff.

It's very much a success story that so much html/css/JavaScript is a garbage fire. They're really effective tools, up there with excel

Re: Ask HN: Is TypeScript worth it?

#83

Post by 8note »

LASR wrote: post #30

The question of whether it's "worth it" really boils down to you and your specific requirements. Even within the same project, there are times when I don't want typechecking - when I am prototyping something out and want to move fast. And there are other times, when I want typechecking - when I am finalizing a feature implementation or doing integration with existing logic etc. It's not a framework. It definitely is…

Solo ic on a small project, you don't write tests? That's the easiest time to write tests! You don't have all the complicated context set up or writing test data, and saves you the run/debug loop for setting up specific situations.

My childhood not knowing about tests had a ton of wasted time trying to check that a change worked

Re: Ask HN: Is TypeScript worth it?

#84

Post by 8note »

roberttod wrote: post #37
LASR wrote: post #30

The question of whether it's "worth it" really boils down to you and your specific requirements. Even within the same project, there are times when I don't want typechecking - when I am prototyping something out and want to move fast. And there are other times, when I want typechecking - when I am finalizing a feature implementation or doing integration with existing logic etc. It's not a framework. It definitely is…

I have seen this IC vs team aspect discussion before, and it definitely has merit. However I am starting to question if it's even worth it for larger codebases used by many devs, which is why I wanted to pose this question. Can you think of cases where it's actually prevented a bug where that piece of code is unit tested? I have been actively monitoring for this to happen, but so far not seen it (I think I have seen…

A unit test can succeed while being completely wrong.

Eg. You test code that calls a dependency that returns a bool, but your tests assume an object response

Unit tests imply assumptions about the integrations, whereas types specify those asumptions

Re: Ask HN: Is TypeScript worth it?

#85

Post by 8note »

roberttod wrote: post #58
thadt wrote: post #50

Yep. I've had the foolish (mis?)fortune of scaling a couple of frontend projects from small to not-so-small starting in JavaScript and then converting to TypeScript. In each one, starting out with vanilla JavaScript was faster (no build!), but at some point our velocity would slow as changes required more testing infrastructure. After switching to TypeScript, we were faster than before. Sure, dealing with TypeScript…

> Sure, dealing with TypeScript can be a hassle, but it is less hassle than dealing with broken software. Can you think of examples where it's prevented broken software? I would prefer to spend more time writing good unit test coverage which in my experience would catch anything that TypeScript would have caught. I have seen it be more useful for autocomplete and self-documenting code, which I could get using JSDoc o…

I know it's happened, but I find out about the error before I've run the tests, or I've used the types to guide me to the correct code rather than writing without and then testing to find out if it's correct.

The autocomplete and documentation are about preventing broken software. You just don't think about it like that because it skips the seeing it break part

Re: Ask HN: Is TypeScript worth it?

#86

Post by brailsafe »

The way I think of this is, if I were running a small team as lean as possible and trying to grow as a business, getting as much out of expensive developer time as possible, my answer would be that I get productivity gains sometimes from the work put in to strictly type inputs and outputs to/from functions, whether they be props on react components or whatever. Otherwise, largely a massive time sink that I'd be pissed I'm paying for.

Re: Ask HN: Is TypeScript worth it?

#88

Post by DiabloD3 »

I think Typescript isn't worth using, and I find this unfortunate. The Typescript team clearly has put years of work into this, and clearly has tried to shore up the deficiencies in Javascript.

Are you writing a brand-new codebase that needs to work on multiple platforms, and not exclusively in a browser? Don't use Typescript, use a language with native WASM support. This includes avoiding solutions that involve Electron, Deno, and CEF, as they are browsers, too.

Are you writing a brand-new codebase that only works in the browser? Learn how to use HTML and CSS correctly, avoid as much Javascript and Typescript as possible: Less is more.

Are you maintaining an existing codebase with extensive Javascript, and you are not willing to rewrite entirely Typescript? Try using Typescript, but you're better off jumping ship, nothing can save it now.

Any codebase that has untyped code in it, that cannot be compile-time analyzed for safety, that requires a significant client-side investment (ie, a giant blob sent to the browser), is kinda doomed to failure, and you will not realize the magnitude of your mistake until it is too late.

I realize my opinion is unpopular, as the programmers on HN seem to be a lot of front-end devs and a lot of "fullstack" devs, where the "full" is JS+TS in NodeJS, using some predefined popular NodeJS framework. I just want systems that are designed to minimize the BS, I've chased enough BS in my lifetime, TS can never deliver a no-BS system to me.

Re: Ask HN: Is TypeScript worth it?

#89

Post by chromatin »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #88

I think Typescript isn't worth using, and I find this unfortunate. The Typescript team clearly has put years of work into this, and clearly has tried to shore up the deficiencies in Javascript. Are you writing a brand-new codebase that needs to work on multiple platforms, and not exclusively in a browser? Don't use Typescript, use a language with native WASM support. This includes avoiding solutions that involve Elec…

> Are you writing a brand-new codebase that only works in the browser? Learn how to use HTML and CSS correctly, avoid as much Javascript and Typescript as possible: Less is more.

It's really difficult to construct a comprehensive SPA without a nice framework such as Vue or React; and as it relates to your prior paragraph about WASM, I'd love to take this advice, but reactive UI frameworks suitable for browser are young and immature compared to Vue and React (IMO).

I would LOVE to use a different language and compile to WASM, just don't think I can replace my Vue+TS frontends at this time.

Re: Ask HN: Is TypeScript worth it?

#90

Post by DiabloD3 »

chromatin wrote: post #89
DiabloD3 wrote: post #88

I think Typescript isn't worth using, and I find this unfortunate. The Typescript team clearly has put years of work into this, and clearly has tried to shore up the deficiencies in Javascript. Are you writing a brand-new codebase that needs to work on multiple platforms, and not exclusively in a browser? Don't use Typescript, use a language with native WASM support. This includes avoiding solutions that involve Elec…

> Are you writing a brand-new codebase that only works in the browser? Learn how to use HTML and CSS correctly, avoid as much Javascript and Typescript as possible: Less is more. It's really difficult to construct a comprehensive SPA without a nice framework such as Vue or React; and as it relates to your prior paragraph about WASM, I'd love to take this advice, but reactive UI frameworks suitable for browser are you…

I think its good to bring up SPAs in this context: fundamentally, they shouldn't exist, and you're using the browser wrong. They are the poster child of design smell when it comes to "web apps".

Do you need SEO to work, even though Google Search torpedoed effective SEO a long time ago? Search engines disfavor websites that are extremely opaque and are made of a single page or few pages.

Do you need to be able to open content in new tabs, thus increasing productivity dramatically? Many SPAs will forget the app state and be unable to navigate back to where you were if you open it in a new tab. This also means you can't bookmark them either, and I've also seen browser tab/window restoration screw over SPA state.

Do you want browser performance? Using complex JS/TS to mangle the DOM and causing redraws outside of the initial page load is a good way to scare users off when their browser shits itself for 3+ seconds.

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