Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

TypeScript: a language for application-scale JavaScript development

typescriptlang.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 316 posts

Re: TypeScript: a language for application-scale JavaScript development

#171

Post by oinksoft »

JimmaDaRustla wrote: post #168
oinksoft wrote: post #156

It seems to me that the type checking in TypeScript is extremely limited compared to what the Closure Compiler supports. The examples only show simple `fooInstance : Foo` examples, whereas Closure supports function prototype validation and such, a la C. I will need to see more elaborate examples. Granted, there is no documentation that I could find on the website. I understand that this is a "preview," but I disagree…

It's an open-source iniative - great ideas like this are best seeded and grown through a great community effort. You sound like you want to be given the whole tree.

I'll grant you that; I expect a more impressive release from a company like Microsoft. Why is there so much work put into the website when the tool and its documentation are sorely lacking?

Re: TypeScript: a language for application-scale JavaScript development

#172

Post by JimmaDaRustla »

OriginalSyn wrote: post #164
cek wrote: post #4

Say what you want about whether this is a good idea or not, it is clear at least part of MS is really serious about open source. * TypeScript is under the Apache 2.0 license [1] * Source is available via git on Codeplex [2] * Installation is as easy as npm install -g typescript [3] Extra bonus coolness: They've provided an online playground like jsfiddle! [4]. [1] http://typescript.codeplex.com/license [2] http://typ…

I don't know when it happened but CodePlex got a makeover as well, it looks good.

Microsoft also has Github a account/accounts - I thought they were going use it for all their open-source projects, but they seem undecided now.

Re: TypeScript: a language for application-scale JavaScript development

#173

Post by masklinn »

jakejake wrote: post #62
koops wrote: post #15

I've written a lot of JavaScript, including large-scale projects, and never once have thought, "Gee, I wish I had type checking." Haven't we come to a consensus that types are more trouble than they're worth? They hurt clarity and catch few bugs.

I have a theory about this - how you feel about static typing is related to whether you see the compiler as your friend or as your enemy. If you see the compiler as your friend then you tend to like type checking because it blocks certain bugs and typos. It won't let you run your code until they're fixed. If you see the compiler as your enemy, as a barricade that you need to get past, then you tend to not like static…

> I have a theory about this - how you feel about static typing is related to whether you see the compiler as your friend or as your enemy.

An alternative explanation is a dislike of overly verbose languages with terrible type systems (the poster child for this category being Java), and as a result of low exposure to better statically typed languages painting all of the category with a Java brush.

Re: TypeScript: a language for application-scale JavaScript development

#174

Post by [deleted] »

jakejake wrote: post #62
koops wrote: post #15

I've written a lot of JavaScript, including large-scale projects, and never once have thought, "Gee, I wish I had type checking." Haven't we come to a consensus that types are more trouble than they're worth? They hurt clarity and catch few bugs.

I have a theory about this - how you feel about static typing is related to whether you see the compiler as your friend or as your enemy. If you see the compiler as your friend then you tend to like type checking because it blocks certain bugs and typos. It won't let you run your code until they're fixed. If you see the compiler as your enemy, as a barricade that you need to get past, then you tend to not like static…

[deleted]

Re: TypeScript: a language for application-scale JavaScript development

#175

Post by [deleted] »

jakejake wrote: post #62
koops wrote: post #15

I've written a lot of JavaScript, including large-scale projects, and never once have thought, "Gee, I wish I had type checking." Haven't we come to a consensus that types are more trouble than they're worth? They hurt clarity and catch few bugs.

I have a theory about this - how you feel about static typing is related to whether you see the compiler as your friend or as your enemy. If you see the compiler as your friend then you tend to like type checking because it blocks certain bugs and typos. It won't let you run your code until they're fixed. If you see the compiler as your enemy, as a barricade that you need to get past, then you tend to not like static…

[deleted]

Re: TypeScript: a language for application-scale JavaScript development

#176

Post by colin_jack »

cek wrote: post #4

Say what you want about whether this is a good idea or not, it is clear at least part of MS is really serious about open source. * TypeScript is under the Apache 2.0 license [1] * Source is available via git on Codeplex [2] * Installation is as easy as npm install -g typescript [3] Extra bonus coolness: They've provided an online playground like jsfiddle! [4]. [1] http://typescript.codeplex.com/license [2] http://typ…

I have to admit I'm impressed with MS here.

Contrast Dart and TS. Dart announced a year ago and they're only now dealing the JS interop issue, so to most people its still only really interesting as a play thing. TS announced and from the looks of if we choose to we can immediately start using it.

I know Dart is more ambitious and maybe long term their focus on issues other than interop will be proved to be correct, but I doubt it.

Re: TypeScript: a language for application-scale JavaScript development

#177

Post by wingspan »

oinksoft wrote: post #156

It seems to me that the type checking in TypeScript is extremely limited compared to what the Closure Compiler supports. The examples only show simple `fooInstance : Foo` examples, whereas Closure supports function prototype validation and such, a la C. I will need to see more elaborate examples. Granted, there is no documentation that I could find on the website. I understand that this is a "preview," but I disagree…

  I have more than a sneaking suspicion that this project is essentially a proof-of-concept, and that it is not heavily used at Microsoft.
My team has been dogfooding TypeScript for several months now, providing lots of feedback and writing > 30,000 lines of code (in many cases the new TypeScript code is shorter than the original Javascript).

Re: TypeScript: a language for application-scale JavaScript development

#178

Post by Me1000 »

msteigerwalt wrote: post #162
camus wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Javascript is dreadfull , and its flaws are counter productive and intolerable. It has good things like closures and first class functions , and that's it. Most of js developpers hate javascript , but are forced to work with it. So they dont care what they use as client language provided it gets the job done. few people cares about Javascript. most of the devs hate it. But the browser as dev plateform is a fact.

From my experience, "most" of those JavaScript developers who "hate JavaScript" are in fact front-end developers who hate writing JavaScript for websites, since they struggle daily with issues such as cross-browser compatibility and inconsistent DOM implementations, which have nothing to do with JavaScript at all, and can't be fixed by a different syntax. It's also compounded because the majority of front-end develop…

Correlation not causation.

As someone who has built large scale JavaScript applications, and has a lot of experience in other languages I really don't like JavaScript. My experience is that a lot of people know JavaScript, but very few people actually like it... Those people generally make writing JavaScript their day job.

Overall, cross browser js isn't really that difficult anymore and I rarely see people complaining about that. Of course, I've been part of the AltJS community for a while, and the people I follow closely are not front end developers.

Re: TypeScript: a language for application-scale JavaScript development

#179

Post by cnp »

alexanderh wrote: post #165
munificent wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source maps[1] should help with this. [1]: http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/developertools/source...

This is cool and I keep hearing its coming to coffeescript soon, but just the fact that the TypeScript website doesnt mention "debugging" or "source maps" anywhere on the front page is disheartening. Its more important than anything to me, yet its still just a "we'll get there eventually" priority for all these alternative javascript languages. I would think microsoft wouldnt want to release this until source maps we…

Language output is more important than SourceMaps. Coffeescript output is substantially harder to read than TypeScript, and personally I've never had an issue tracking down issues. I'm looking forward to it, sourcemaps or not.

Re: TypeScript: a language for application-scale JavaScript development

#180

Post by oinksoft »

wingspan wrote: post #177
oinksoft wrote: post #156

It seems to me that the type checking in TypeScript is extremely limited compared to what the Closure Compiler supports. The examples only show simple `fooInstance : Foo` examples, whereas Closure supports function prototype validation and such, a la C. I will need to see more elaborate examples. Granted, there is no documentation that I could find on the website. I understand that this is a "preview," but I disagree…

I have more than a sneaking suspicion that this project is essentially a proof-of-concept, and that it is not heavily used at Microsoft. My team has been dogfooding TypeScript for several months now, providing lots of feedback and writing > 30,000 lines of code (in many cases the new TypeScript code is shorter than the original Javascript).

In this case, I must infer that the culture of documentation is not the same at Microsoft as it is at Google.

Further, how can you have a tool like this and nothing for generating type-aware documentation from your source code? Google uses jsdoc-toolkit, so this is a moot point for them. Either you guys are using this in an informal fashion, or documentation isn't that important at Microsoft, or you just haven't released the doc generation tool(s), which would be a really odd choice!

Post reply on HN