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I Was Wrong About TypeScript

triplet.fi

191–194 of 194 posts

Re: I Was Wrong About TypeScript

#193
I still use Babel with TypeScript.

This gives me the benefit of TS (specifically, typing), on my preferred development machine (Windows, where FB Flow is really crappy), while getting language-level polyfills (like generators) from Babel.

A nice side effect of having TS "compile" to ES6 modules is that Babel's nice-module-loading is used, which means I can just "import _ from 'lodash'" and never have to mess around with "* as" and the endless manipulation of .d.ts files.

That said, there are still things missing. In particular, object spread support, which is so nice when using Redux.

I've thought about maybe doing a Babel precompile, followed by TS for typing, then a Babel "real compile", but that's probably just crazy.

Re: I Was Wrong About TypeScript

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it sounds like everything worked out.

It did, and it will. My point is that just like with these "legacy" languages, the next generation of TypeScript developers are no more likely to "drop down into JavaScript" as a C developer is to "drop down into assembly". So our development tools and debuggers must be really solid at the language level that we code in. And just like I skipped the "transpiling" phase of C++, I'll probably skip the transpiling phase…

The advantage is it gives you an escape route if Typescript ends up dying. I worked on a project that had to do a giant dead language -> Java conversion, and it was extremely painful.
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