TypeScript at Google • Hacker News Board

Re: TypeScript at Google

#61

Post by theprotocol » Sun, Sep 02, 2018, 6:54 AM UTC

I haven't used it in a while. Does it play nice with plain-JavaScript libraries from npm yet?

I quit using it a few years back because it was a _nightmare_ having to write d.ts files for everything or be unable to use noImplictAny for your own files. `AllowJs` wasn't even a thing when I started using it, but even after its addition, this problem continued to be absolutely disastrous for my project. I remember being very disillusioned with it because all of their materials (website, docs) kept hammering on how effortless and incremental it was to use with JavaScript, yet `AllowJS` wasn't even a thing for the longest time...

I also had very severe issues with its importing of npm modules, even ones that supported TypeScript. Sometimes it would double-parse bundled d.ts files resulting in a huge error output. Other times it would just completely fail to resolve import paths no matter what I tried.

I remember various workarounds like having to define empty modules for each plain-JS import, or using `///` imports for certain files, and it was a nightmare (and I found many similar issues on StackOverflow that were unsolved). The maintainers at the time considered these terrible workarounds as valid solutions, and thus would almost not even entertain reports regarding these problems.

Re: TypeScript at Google

#62

Post by elbear » Sun, Sep 02, 2018, 6:59 AM UTC

s4vi0r wrote: post #52

As somebody migrating a React codebase from JS to TS, I can't believe how popular TS is. It seems like something that only exists due to the popularity of Angular, where I can only assume the experience is significantly better than with React. The type system is frankly disappointing, and the errors the compiler spits out at you (besides the most obvious ones) are almost always useless or gibberish and at times even…

I used TypeScript with Mithril and I really liked it. I'm not going back to plain JS ever again.

Re: TypeScript at Google

#63

Post by lexy0202 » Sun, Sep 02, 2018, 7:09 AM UTC

I'm still reluctant to use TypeScript given that it has a serious type narrowing bug that is two years old! You'd think Microsoft could have sorted this out by now.

https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript/issues/9998

Re: TypeScript at Google

#64

Post by egeozcan » Sun, Sep 02, 2018, 7:31 AM UTC

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #8

mattferderer wrote: post #5

I'm hesitant to work in any JavaScript code base that isn't using TypeScript at this point. Two years ago, it was painful to use as any early release is but the benefits were obvious. My biggest wish for TypeScript is that it was easier to use experimental flavors that supported JS features currently being considered, such as the pipeline operator proposal.

TypeScript was released in 2012, I wouldn't call a 4 year old tool an early release. And if you were already using Webpack picking it up was as easy as adding a loader. IMO, using such early proposals isn't worth the risk in production. Especially for proposals that are so young that they haven't even settled on a clear spec as to its behavior, like the pipeline operator.

Sorry this is self promotion but I think it's relevant if you need something like the pipe operator now: https://github.com/egeozcan/ppipe

It's also ironic that I couldn't write this in Typescript because I simply couldn't figure out how. These days when I use my helper, I just use any and cast the result. It sucks but until I figure out how to type proxies and use variadic generic type parameters (if and when these are supported) I don't have another solution.

Re: TypeScript at Google

#65

Post by dvlsg » Sun, Sep 02, 2018, 7:44 AM UTC

Bahamut wrote: post #55

MBCook wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you expand some more on the tooling/editor support? I’ve only done a cursory look. My editor (IntelliJ) supports both to some level. Webpack/Babel do too. I’m very new to writing React and modern front end JS so it’s quite possible there are things that I should be looking out for that I don’t even know about.

At this point, I think Flow clearly has a minority mindshare & is looked at more skeptically all around the JS ecosystem, and maybe even the React ecosystem based on what I see talked around. TS does a much better job integrating with existing JS and is much more practical about incremental updates whereas Flow bleeds all too easily into needing to add typing to a significant amount of code in order to add a type. Th…

I didn't have too many problems with typescript and ramda. I occasionally have to explicitly send in types to the first function of a pipe, which is a little annoying, but for the most part it seems to just work for how I use it. What problems have you run into?

Re: TypeScript at Google

#66

Post by rukenshia » Sun, Sep 02, 2018, 7:47 AM UTC

s4vi0r wrote: post #52

As somebody migrating a React codebase from JS to TS, I can't believe how popular TS is. It seems like something that only exists due to the popularity of Angular, where I can only assume the experience is significantly better than with React. The type system is frankly disappointing, and the errors the compiler spits out at you (besides the most obvious ones) are almost always useless or gibberish and at times even…

I feel you and I think it is more of a "React + TypeScript" problem than a TypeScript problem.

We have started using Angular 2 (now.. 6?) with TypeScript for a project last year and I never had big issues with TypeScript.

Last month, one of our teams started a React project and given the success of using TypeScript before, they opted to do the same with their project. I've walked them through a few things but found myself getting frustrated a lot with weird TypeScript errors. Especially things like typing your Props was such a nightmare that we resorted to "any" a lot more than I'd like.

The project is not using TypeScript 3 so I am unsure whether that would get rid of some problems but React + TypeScript was just a frustrating experience for us.

Re: TypeScript at Google

#67

Post by galfarragem » Sun, Sep 02, 2018, 7:47 AM UTC

Isn't Reason/Ocaml a better direction than Typescript? I believe that TS is a step forward but I'm afraid that we are still in a muddy path.

Re: TypeScript at Google

#68

Post by jpswade » Sun, Sep 02, 2018, 7:51 AM UTC

I think the most fascinating thing here is that Google are turning to a language developed and maintained by Microsoft.

Re: TypeScript at Google

#69

Post by shadowmint » Sun, Sep 02, 2018, 7:51 AM UTC

EE84M3i wrote: post #23

shadowmint wrote: post #15

I feel like this sort of organic growth (for typescript) is a very healthy sign for a project. ES6 (or whatever we’re supposed to refer to it as now) is good enough for many things, but when you see it used heavily with, for example, proptype hints... you get the feeling that there really is a trend these days towards flavoring static type checking and the error checking that offers. I think its an interesting shift,…

Sorry if this is a well known term but what is a "proptype hint" in this context? I can't seem to find any references for '"proptype hint" "javascript"' or any variations that come to mind on Google. Edit - changed previous sentence to "proptype hint". I originally erroneously read the parent as saying "prototype hint" which I couldn't find results for, but even after correcting my reading error my question still sta…

github.com/facebook/prop-types is the 2nd google search result for this term, and is what I was referring to, although the first result (devhints.io/react#property-validation) is arguably a better summary.

Ie. ‘lite’ type checking, used in react.

(did you perhaps see the results for ‘javascript prop type hint’ as a google autocorrect suggestion or something? This is a well known term, but I’m pretty amazed two seconds of google didn’t discover what it was...)

Re: TypeScript at Google

#70

Post by FlorianRappl » Sun, Sep 02, 2018, 7:52 AM UTC

s4vi0r wrote: post #52

As somebody migrating a React codebase from JS to TS, I can't believe how popular TS is. It seems like something that only exists due to the popularity of Angular, where I can only assume the experience is significantly better than with React. The type system is frankly disappointing, and the errors the compiler spits out at you (besides the most obvious ones) are almost always useless or gibberish and at times even…

I can believe how popular TS is and it is super useful. I would not write a React application of any noticeable size without TS (and just FYI I would never willingly write an Angular app). The reason that I get far superior code completion and meaningful warnings / errors is sufficient to add a few annotations here and there.

Many people are doing TS wrong. They add types everywhere. Honestly, you should write as many types as necessary, but not more. Use type inference which works remarkably well.