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How an Anti-TypeScript “JavaScript developer” like me became a TypeScript fan

chiragswadia.medium.com

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Re: How an Anti-TypeScript “JavaScript developer” like me became a TypeScript fan

#121

Post by nickysielicki »

madeofpalk wrote: post #2

It's probably worth taking a step back and interrogating why the actual "Why was I Anti-TypeScript?" a little bit more and use it as an opportunity for broader self development. The author didn't use and understand something, and rather than trying to they instead just defaulted to rejection. It's midly disapointing seeing this in people who label themselves as "Senior".

I think that he is presenting his prior attitude towards typescript a certain way for dramatic effect / so that it was easier to write a blog post about it. In reality he probably was not as skeptical as he sounds here -- otherwise we wouldn't be reading an article by him about how great typescript is.

Re: How an Anti-TypeScript “JavaScript developer” like me became a TypeScript fan

#122

Post by lhorie »

madeofpalk wrote: post #2

It's probably worth taking a step back and interrogating why the actual "Why was I Anti-TypeScript?" a little bit more and use it as an opportunity for broader self development. The author didn't use and understand something, and rather than trying to they instead just defaulted to rejection. It's midly disapointing seeing this in people who label themselves as "Senior".

Ironically, as someone who has experience w/ both fast-and-loose JS and with "properly" statically typed languages, my beef with typescript is precisely that it allows people to be fast and loose, sometimes in ways that are not super obvious. For example:

    type Thing = {
        name: string,
    };

    function getThing(): Thing {
        return JSON.parse('{"error": "invalid id"}')
    }

    const thing: Thing = getThing(); // lie to me!
    console.log(thing.name);
This is a trivial example to illustrate the idea that it's relatively easy to make a type that cascades through a very large app but which is backed by a complete lie.

I definitely think that there's also something to be said about meta-programming yak shaving (e.g. people wasting hours trying to write a "function" that takes an enum and outputs another enum w/ a fixed prefix, when simply writing out the enums would've taken 30 seconds w/ VSCode's multiple cursor feature)

Personally, the value I see in TS is in cementing documentable facts about a system: e.g. such and such function takes such and such well-defined entity, dot not treat this `options` argument as a generic bucket for pass-through garbage.

Re: How an Anti-TypeScript “JavaScript developer” like me became a TypeScript fan

#123

Post by zaccusl »

pjmlp wrote: post #72
arcturus17 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About 95% of React components I see in the wild are in TypeScript. The most rapidly growing JS backend framework (Nest) is in TS. Deno, the evolution of Node, is based on TS. Pretty much everything in the JavaScript OSS world has TS options or is based on TS. I doubt Coffeescript ever saw this scale of adoption.

We only use TypeScript on frameworks that make it a requirement, the language is starting to look like Haskell. As much as I like Anders work, it is impossible to understand modern TypeScript without looking into tsconfig.json before looking into source code.

I don't understand what the tsconfig has to do with understanding the source? Maybe when using different path resolving or different tsconfigs to compile test files vs. production files?

Many toolings make it so you don't even need to worry about the tsconfig anymore (though in reality it is very helpful to understand it).

Re: How an Anti-TypeScript “JavaScript developer” like me became a TypeScript fan

#124

Post by recursive »

tester34 wrote: post #43
adenozine wrote: post #26

I just can't bring myself to use curly bracket languages. I can't make a good enough case for any of them. I read way too much code to make myself read code that's not beautiful.

what are alternatives? python's tabs?

lisp?

Re: How an Anti-TypeScript “JavaScript developer” like me became a TypeScript fan

#125

Post by mywittyname »

nickysielicki wrote: post #119
cosmotic wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the skepticism of new shiny things is healthy. Of the set of things that exist, most things are worse than the things one already uses/prefers. Most new things solve a specific problem that may not overlap with the problems one is trying to solve. With software development, a huge part of the puzzle is tooling (as the article points out), so even if typescript is obviously superior as a language, the tooling…

Strong typing is not shiny or new and, even if you're a javascript guy, not being remotely familiar with any strongly-typed language (or generics?!) is a red flag. (edit: red flag is a bad description, because he ended up being self-reflective and looking deeper, which is just about the furthest thing from a red flag.)

Agreed. But some people have an attitude of Strongly Typed == Needlessly Verbose. Probably because most developers have only experienced Strong Typing via Java.

Re: How an Anti-TypeScript “JavaScript developer” like me became a TypeScript fan

#126

Post by jehlakj »

lhorie wrote: post #122
madeofpalk wrote: post #2

It's probably worth taking a step back and interrogating why the actual "Why was I Anti-TypeScript?" a little bit more and use it as an opportunity for broader self development. The author didn't use and understand something, and rather than trying to they instead just defaulted to rejection. It's midly disapointing seeing this in people who label themselves as "Senior".

Ironically, as someone who has experience w/ both fast-and-loose JS and with "properly" statically typed languages, my beef with typescript is precisely that it allows people to be fast and loose, sometimes in ways that are not super obvious. For example: type Thing = { name: string, }; function getThing(): Thing { return JSON.parse('{"error": "invalid id"}') } const thing: Thing = getThing(); // lie to me! console.l…

If you have to rely on restrictively typed languages to produce maintainable code, I think that’s a different topic.

Typescript isn’t perfect by any means but it does a good job keeping code based easier to work with in a larger team. Much better than vanilla JavaScript

Re: How an Anti-TypeScript “JavaScript developer” like me became a TypeScript fan

#127

Post by tshaddox »

agumonkey wrote: post #15
cableshaft wrote: post #4

For me, I can handle the lack of static typing when I'm doing small scripts, like if it's going to be 100 lines or so of Python (my go-to language if I need to test some math out in a sandbox or do some file manipulation on my system). I might actually be a little faster in writing those scripts because of the lack of typing. Once it starts getting any bigger than that, though, static typing really catches and points…

I guess static first is a chore because at that point you have no idea what invariant or structure is required for the task. After prototyping you know where to tighten the bolts.

Designing my types first is precisely how I want to begin prototyping.

Re: How an Anti-TypeScript “JavaScript developer” like me became a TypeScript fan

#128

Post by zaccusl »

agumonkey wrote: post #15
cableshaft wrote: post #4

For me, I can handle the lack of static typing when I'm doing small scripts, like if it's going to be 100 lines or so of Python (my go-to language if I need to test some math out in a sandbox or do some file manipulation on my system). I might actually be a little faster in writing those scripts because of the lack of typing. Once it starts getting any bigger than that, though, static typing really catches and points…

I guess static first is a chore because at that point you have no idea what invariant or structure is required for the task. After prototyping you know where to tighten the bolts.

There is why TypeScript IS so great.

In the early days of a new app or feature, you have no idea what the correct data/type shapes are.

In TypeScript you can define the types and then easily do major refactors even if you have 1000's of lines already written.

It becomes so tedious to do the same refactoring in JavaScript.

TypeScript makes it trivial to change an object or function signature when developing new code (or old code).

Refactors that take 3 minutes in TypeScript take 3 days in JavaScript and you better hope you catch all the uses.

The refactor ability that TypeScript gives you makes it so much easier to change data types and function signatures dozens of times until you get things right.

Re: How an Anti-TypeScript “JavaScript developer” like me became a TypeScript fan

#129

Post by madeofpalk »

lhorie wrote: post #122
madeofpalk wrote: post #2

It's probably worth taking a step back and interrogating why the actual "Why was I Anti-TypeScript?" a little bit more and use it as an opportunity for broader self development. The author didn't use and understand something, and rather than trying to they instead just defaulted to rejection. It's midly disapointing seeing this in people who label themselves as "Senior".

Ironically, as someone who has experience w/ both fast-and-loose JS and with "properly" statically typed languages, my beef with typescript is precisely that it allows people to be fast and loose, sometimes in ways that are not super obvious. For example: type Thing = { name: string, }; function getThing(): Thing { return JSON.parse('{"error": "invalid id"}') } const thing: Thing = getThing(); // lie to me! console.l…

The "curse" of Typescript is that it's built on Javascript, so you can tell it to lie to you all the time. This is the problem with introducing Typescript to a larger group of Javascript developers who arent all on board (because of either experience or being stubborn) - you still need to establish good habits and patterns for how to write typescript.

I'm working through the very lie you're showing now because the disclipline wasnt established from the start to avoid these anti-patterns. Typescript isnt the perfect magic bullet that will disappear all your problems - you still need to have good developers writing good code, but TS will make it easier.

Re: How an Anti-TypeScript “JavaScript developer” like me became a TypeScript fan

#130

Post by ysavir »

myguysi wrote: post #98
Zelphyr wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d consider myself senior. I’ve been using Javascript since it was beta. I like Javascript. I don’t mind TypeScript. I mean, it’s nice and all but it doesn’t strike me as the be-all that others make it out to be. Maybe I just don’t use it for the types of project for which it was designed. It’s like I’m a metal worker and I get along fine with a ball peen hammer. You come along and give me your claw hammer with grea…

I understand the sentiment, but a better comparison would be if your tool of choice had to be shared between everyone on your team.

Would that imply that the GP needs to reconsider their willingness to use TypeScript, or is it just a friendly reminder that there is utility in finding teams with shared values?
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