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Why does TypeScript have be the answer to anything?

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Re: Why does TypeScript have be the answer to anything?

#61

Post by giulianob »

rmrfrmrf wrote: post #49
ivanjovanovic wrote: post #2

The way I see it: 1. TypeScript is an answer to the poor state of JavaScript development today and an attempt to get more structure into it. There are other answers as well, and it can be discussed on properties of each of them, but they are competing in the same domain. 2. Since state of JavaScript is as it is, it is obvious that there is a lot of potential benefit in being a leader of the technology in that domain.…

To me, TypeScript is the answer to 1) the perceived quirkiness of JavaScript to those who are unfamiliar with it and 2) an increasing number of developers coming out of college with heavy Java backgrounds. I see TypeScript taking off mainly because of the latter point--strict typing and well-defined OO practices will act as a decent safety net for new developers.

Actually just about every popular library out there for JS creates some sort of fake OO layer on top of JS (e.g. Backbone, jQuery, Prototype, YUI, etc..). If you are just throwing a couple of scripts together then JS is fine but if you are trying to make an actual application, you need libraries to make it more OO.

I've worked on large code bases in several languages and JS has to got to be one of the worst when it comes to code quality due to the flexibility. It's always an awful experience trying to refactor a large portion of JS since it's difficult to even find where objects are being used. I'd take AS3 over JS anytime of the day since it allows me to specify types (though optional) and if I do the tooling is able to do a lot of the static analysis that is important in large projects. TypeScript still gives you plain old JS while allowing you to specify some extra information in order to facilitate development. It's actually new developers that aren't aware of these things and love JS from what I've seen. They haven't worked on large code bases and love the flexibility of JS. When you actually are trying to create proper abstractions in order to architect your code, you need visibility modifiers, you need interfaces, and you need types.

Re: Why does TypeScript have be the answer to anything?

#62

Post by giulianob »

JackC wrote: post #52
jmmcd wrote: post #38

This isn't exactly the right place, but I don't know where else to ask this. When people argue for static types (whether optional as in TypeScript or mandatory), one of the main reasons is "tooling". Why? I know that writing a "go to definition" function for your IDE is impossible to do 100% correctly, when types are dynamic. But I would've thought it'd be pretty easy to do a 99% implementation, which rarely fails if…

I came to ask a similar question -- how much better is IDE support for statically typed languages than, for example, JetBrains' IDE support for Python, Javascript, CoffeeScript, etc? They offer code-completion, live error highlighting, go-to-declaration, refactoring (with a confirmation step if it's ambiguous), all that good stuff.[1] The interface asks for clarification when it's not sure what something refers to. I…

If you've ever used Resharper then it's difficult to work in any other environment. I doubt most of Resharper's features would be possible in a non statically typed language. It's a Jetbrains product as well:

http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/

Re: Why does TypeScript have be the answer to anything?

#63

Post by WayneDB »

rmrfrmrf wrote: post #49
ivanjovanovic wrote: post #2

The way I see it: 1. TypeScript is an answer to the poor state of JavaScript development today and an attempt to get more structure into it. There are other answers as well, and it can be discussed on properties of each of them, but they are competing in the same domain. 2. Since state of JavaScript is as it is, it is obvious that there is a lot of potential benefit in being a leader of the technology in that domain.…

To me, TypeScript is the answer to 1) the perceived quirkiness of JavaScript to those who are unfamiliar with it and 2) an increasing number of developers coming out of college with heavy Java backgrounds. I see TypeScript taking off mainly because of the latter point--strict typing and well-defined OO practices will act as a decent safety net for new developers.

Javascript is quirky. It's a great language, but c'mon...please. That horse has been beaten to death and the long discussion on this topic alone is proof of it's quirkiness and it's numerous pitfalls.

The idea that (optional) strict typing and (optional) well-defined OO practices would only work to act as a "safety net" for new developers is, quite frankly, ludicrous. Static typing is the bedrock of static analysis and if you can't see the value in static analysis, take a read here - http://www.altdevblogaday.com/2011/12/24/static-code-analysi...

You're welcome to keep doing things the hard way. You will certainly be enabled to do so since Javascript is not going anywhere. But easy-to-use Javascript-compatible languages with powerful, precise and accessible features are the future, IMO. I don't think I'm alone in that sentiment given the recently budding interest in this arena.

Re: Why does TypeScript have be the answer to anything?

#64

Post by saraid216 »

krohrbaugh wrote: post #28

First of all, I'm glad Microsoft is getting involved in this space. They have a deep talent pool when it comes to language design and tooling and it'll be interesting to see where TypeScript goes. Unfortunately, the arguments trying to draw some kind of monumental distinction between TypeScript, Dart and CoffeeScript are silly. They are all a response to the state of client-side development and are all applying essen…

> I agree with one point, however: It is disappointing when smart people display a profound ignorance of computing history.

Yeah, this was kind of an odd non sequitur that didn't go anywhere. I half-expected the article to actually give an illustration from computing history.

Re: Why does TypeScript have be the answer to anything?

#65

Post by seanmcdirmid »

jmmcd wrote: post #47
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be more specific you have to use some crazy static analysis technology (global interprocedural analysis) that is intractable unless you sacrifice accuracy. Human have similar problems as compilers/tooling, though they are a bit better at understanding nuanced conventions to make better judgements about what dynamic code is doing.

Yes, of course, we sacrifice accuracy. I said so at the very start. But imagine a "go to definition" tool that works correctly for 99% of cases and barfs or goes to the wrong place on the others. If the alternative is no tool at all, that still sounds pretty useful! I admit there are cases (refactoring is an example) where if you don't trust the tool 100% you won't use it. But many tools are not like that.

Well, you'd be without feedback alot, state of the art in type recovery is nowhere near 99%. Your libraries can exploit the flexibiliy of a dynamic language (meta programming, crazy unions) and make the job much harder. Typescript seems very interesting in the way they handle type retrofits on libraries, but I haven't really absorbed it yet.

Re: Why does TypeScript have be the answer to anything?

#66

Post by nxn »

dreamdu5t wrote: post #14
ivanjovanovic wrote: post #2

The way I see it: 1. TypeScript is an answer to the poor state of JavaScript development today and an attempt to get more structure into it. There are other answers as well, and it can be discussed on properties of each of them, but they are competing in the same domain. 2. Since state of JavaScript is as it is, it is obvious that there is a lot of potential benefit in being a leader of the technology in that domain.…

Poor state of JavaScript development? By what measure? I've been doing "application-scale" development using JavaScript for 5 years... Not once did I think "gee my development process would be better if I had rigid typing." The notion is laughable. The lack of rigid typing and classes is by design. This is a feature not a bug. I honestly wonder about a programmer's understanding of JavaScript if they say things like…

To preface, let's say that "application-scale" means something like the following: your server outputs a single html file that only contains references to js files and css (i.e., the minimum to get the app to work right), from then on all data operations are ajax calls to a server side API, while the entire state of the app, all UI/markup components included, is maintained via JS.

I've worked on a couple of these applications, they almost always end up having some fake-class system that provides mechanisms for encapsulation, code sharing, and namespacing. There's often almost a hundred of these fake classes defined with thousands of instances living in memory. I grant you that you can use things like the module pattern to accomplish those requirements -- in fact, if you couldn't, then I wouldn't be here talking about it because I'd be writing Java applets instead. But the lack of having static typing to catch simple errors and enabling basic refactoring tools (like renaming something without having to use a regular expression which took 2 hours to "perfect", or simply switching argument orders, etc) was the absolute worst. I've spent countless hours debugging problems that occurred because something like a string was accidentally passed when an array was expected, and only having the actual runtime error occur 50 function calls later because something like "cat"[0] was working fine up to that point. Static typing would have caught that before I even ran the app.

Anyway, these types of apps perhaps aren't as common as websites, but they exist and therefore there is a need for statically typed languages for the browser.

Re: Why does TypeScript have be the answer to anything?

#67

Post by eranation »

I think google missed big time on Dart, and something like TypeScript is what they should have done. I really find it hard to come up with bad things to say about Microsoft's move, it's a mental cognitive dissonance, but I have to admit, they are doing something very right.

1) it's just JavaScript - winning some CoffeeScript fans

2) regular JavaScript is valid, (just like SCSS vs SASS)

3) it has day 1 interop with vanila JS (Dart just started, and until it has it, it's just a play-with language)

4) TypeScript support for most popular editors (Dart has mostly Eclipse I think, TypeScript has support for everything but eclipse, but an eclipse plugin is just a matter of time probably)

5) TypeScript has a bit more chance becoming a standard, (future ECMASCript 6?)

Well played Microsoft, didn't see it coming...

VS 2012 is actually nice, still I would probably wait for an Eclipse plugin (I'm sure someone out there is already working on it) but this is for me a big reason not to start learning Dart

Re: Why does TypeScript have be the answer to anything?

#68

Post by cmccabe »

Seems like a troll article to me.

Of course people are comparing TypeScript to Dart. They do the same freaking thing-- provide you with a different way to write code to run in the browser.

Then he presents the metaphysical distinction between "building on JS" (good) versus "interop with JS" (bad). What's the difference? Neither language is JS. If something breaks, you're still going to be debugging code that isn't the code you wrote-- it's generated code.

I feel no better informed after reading this article than before. Will someone please do a straightforward comparison between Dart, TypeScript, and CoffeeScript? It might be kind of hard because as far as I can see, TypeScript does not build on Linux.

P.S. Is "it doesn't even use the JS numeric type" supposed to be a put-down of Dart? I always thought the JS numeric type was a big mistake. Who would want to be forced to use floats for everything? Inaccurate and slow-- two great tastes that taste great together.

Re: Why does TypeScript have be the answer to anything?

#69

Post by cmccabe »

eranation wrote: post #67

I think google missed big time on Dart, and something like TypeScript is what they should have done. I really find it hard to come up with bad things to say about Microsoft's move, it's a mental cognitive dissonance, but I have to admit, they are doing something very right. 1) it's just JavaScript - winning some CoffeeScript fans 2) regular JavaScript is valid, (just like SCSS vs SASS) 3) it has day 1 interop with va…

I think you answered your own question. Google wanted a fundamentally different language, not just JS with some extra features thrown in. As to what will win out in the end-- I have no idea.

Re: Why does TypeScript have be the answer to anything?

#70

Post by Locke1689 »

zachrose wrote: post #37
ajanuary wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The type system in TypeScript isn't 'rigid'. It's both optional and structural. These combine to make it a heck of a lot more lightweight than something like C++ or Java. The classes in TypeScript are a formalisation of a very common design pattern in Javascript, so obviously people do think it's useful. TypeScript takes the common practice and makes it more succinct. (Other than inheritance, which does seem a little…

Perhaps you understand TypeScript better than I do. My rough understanding is that TypeScript is JavaScript with what's essentially inline JSDoc. The compiler is just there to give hints and warnings. Is this right?

No. JSDoc is just hints. TypeScript offers a fuzzy type unification system.
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