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Remove TypeScript

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Re: Remove TypeScript

#31

Post by arecurrence »

I'm going to be a bit of a naysayer here and comment that while I fully appreciate and endorse TypeScript... there are certainly situations where Javascript would be preferred. EG: Deno also dropped TypeScript internally.

What they've done seems a bit rough around the edges and a types file of some sort for external facing customers is a critical follow-up PR, but I would not blindly trash these guys for switching to Javascript. I suspect they did it so quickly because it would have sat in committee for eternity otherwise.

I probably wouldn't write anything in pure JavaScript today when TypeScript is such an enormous boon... but I'm also not working in the space that this project is working in.

Re: Remove TypeScript

#32

Post by digging »

incrudible wrote: post #8
Waterluvian wrote: post #3

After years of being resistant to “extra layers of complexity that slows me down” I adopted TS and now I can’t live without it. So as a fanboy, when I read things like this I try my darnedest to have empathy and try to understand it from their point of view. And I’m just really struggling to in this case. I get that it adds some complexity. But what are you actually getting without it? It’s not like types go away. Th…

Javascript and type annotations in comments go a long way, too. Not the whole way, a bit annoying to write at times, but 95% of the value is there. Just getting rid of types after you already authored your software with them in mind just seems like the worst of both worlds. I have trouble making any sense of it.

> Javascript and type annotations in comments go a long way, too. Not the whole way, a bit annoying to write at times, but 95% of the value is there.

I'd say that "5%" is where some really nasty devils lay though. Plus, if you're going through the effort of documenting types in comments, why not use TS and prove that they're correct + up-to-date?

Re: Remove TypeScript

#33

Post by DanRosenwasser »

Hi all, I work on the TypeScript team. There's already a lot of feedback on the issue itself from users urging the authors not to make this decision, so I will hold back from adding to the noise on that issue. Every team is entitled to make the decisions that they feel are best for them, and I don't think it'd be productive to change anyone's mind in this case.

Instead I'll just mention that I always welcome thoughts on some of the challenges teams encounter when writing in TypeScript. It helps make the language better. If there's anything you often hit, you can comment here, create an issue on the issue tracker, or reach out to me at Daniel Mylastname microsoft

Re: Remove TypeScript

#34

Post by celrod »

tasn wrote: post #11

> Fully recognize that TypeScript offers some people some advantages, but to my eyes, the benefits are evident in this PR. The code not only reads much better, it's also freed of the type wrangling and gymnastics needed to please the TS compiler. This is such a terrible take. The same could be said about removing tests. It does simplify things, and not having to please the damn test suite is indeed a boon for product…

> Strong typing is a hill I'm willing to die on, and at Svix we encode everything we humanly can in the type system. Let the compiler catch our mistakes...

After years of writing Julia (dynamic) and C++ (static), I'm willing to die on that hill too. But I've encountered more people who disagree with me than agree, so I'm not surprised by seeing a PR like this.

Re: Remove TypeScript

#35

Post by Etheryte »

tasn wrote: post #11

> Fully recognize that TypeScript offers some people some advantages, but to my eyes, the benefits are evident in this PR. The code not only reads much better, it's also freed of the type wrangling and gymnastics needed to please the TS compiler. This is such a terrible take. The same could be said about removing tests. It does simplify things, and not having to please the damn test suite is indeed a boon for product…

This is a great analogy and succinctly summarizes my feelings on the matter. Just like you don't need tests for a quick prototype or for every last little bit of code, the same goes for static type checking, but past a certain point it's a must have.

Re: Remove TypeScript

#36

Post by n2d4 »

Jcampuzano2 wrote: post #22
Waterluvian wrote: post #3

After years of being resistant to “extra layers of complexity that slows me down” I adopted TS and now I can’t live without it. So as a fanboy, when I read things like this I try my darnedest to have empathy and try to understand it from their point of view. And I’m just really struggling to in this case. I get that it adds some complexity. But what are you actually getting without it? It’s not like types go away. Th…

Merging this PR honestly just seems like a 'political move' in terms of forcing their opinion about TS on everyone else as the "best decision". If they actually cared they would have at least addressed the comments, and added written documentation/jsdoc comments in places where literally theres no way to know what is going on without the types that were given.

What I found ironic was this part from the reasoning post:

> [V]ery few programmers are typically interested in having their opinion on typing changed. Most programmers find themselves drawn strongly to typing or not quite early in their career, and then spend the rest of it rationalizing The Correct Choice to themselves and others.

Feels like projecting. I think very few programmers would feel this strongly about typing that they would break things by rushing a PR within hours, despite plenty of negative responses and barely any positive ones.

Re: Remove TypeScript

#37

Post by davidrupp »

threatofrain wrote: post #7

Associated blog post: https://world.hey.com/dhh/turbo-8-is-dropping-typescript-701...

"Most programmers find themselves drawn strongly to typing or not quite early in their career, and then spend the rest of it rationalizing The Correct Choice to themselves and others."

Hashtag irony.

Re: Remove TypeScript

#38

Post by bafe »

tasn wrote: post #11

> Fully recognize that TypeScript offers some people some advantages, but to my eyes, the benefits are evident in this PR. The code not only reads much better, it's also freed of the type wrangling and gymnastics needed to please the TS compiler. This is such a terrible take. The same could be said about removing tests. It does simplify things, and not having to please the damn test suite is indeed a boon for product…

I'll join you on that hill. I'd rather "fight" my IDE/the compiler than have runtime errors. Also writing code in a dynamic language is painful after you used a statically typed language in combination with a good IDE

Re: Remove TypeScript

#39

Post by whoknowsidont »

TS feels like a fever dream. It's as if a concentrated group of people were so convinced of a solution, that despite all available "parol" or academic evidence, they foisted it upon the ecosystem doing untold amounts of damage for years to come.

And if you don't use it, well it's because you simply don't understand types and your code base will be riddled with bugs! (lol)

The best, most testable, falsifiable argument I have heard for typescript is that helps with certain IDE's; but personally I haven't noticed a difference. In fact, TS causes me to go into dead ends with VS Code trying to hunt for the actual implementation of something in sizable code bases to the point where I'll just look at even the minified code to figure out what's actually going on.

Because at the end of the day, TS isn't an actual type system. It's a bunch of macros that sit on type of a jazz'd up linter (yes I am being editorial here). I have been coding for a long time, and personally I have never jumped into a TS code base and gone "oh thank god they decided to abstract this correctly!" These days it's met with a sigh and knowing a simple task is going to take me 10x as long to do than it would with any other tech stack.

Don't even get me started on the bugs TS itself has caused over the years.

People have often and loudly pointed out how awful web development can be (and was) over the last 20+ years but honestly, TS has been pretty pointlessly painful. The pain in yesteryear's was due to competing interests and the fact that many aspects of web development were just brand new.

It's a mistake we just need to fess up to as an industry.

Re: Remove TypeScript

#40

Post by tuukkah »

TehShrike wrote: post #14

I've found the TypeScript tooling story to be a bit clunky (protip: use tsc --noEmit for type checking in CI, but don't use tsc for anything else). But TypeScript the language is great – I spent 3+ years each working with C++ and Java, and TS's type system is much more expressive and useful. I wish people would distinguish whether or not they object to the tooling, or the language.

What do you use for type checking in dev - tsserver? https://github.com/microsoft/TypeScript/wiki/Standalone-Serv...

Regarding this, it's a pity there's no officially maintained support for the language server protocol in TypeScript, and the last update from MS on the issue is from two years ago ("We've had personnel changes"): https://github.com/microsoft/TypeScript/issues/39459#issueco...

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