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Node.js adds experimental support for TypeScript

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Re: Node.js adds experimental support for TypeScript

#111

Post by VMG »

zx8080 wrote: post #99
harshitaneja wrote: post #88

I really enjoy typescript and have been yearning for a typescript runtime but I can't help but laugh that I left java all those years ago to finally seek something a lot closer to java. I guess we all just wanted java with JIT, more feature rich type system and gradual typing. Also for all the shortcomings of npm ecosystem, it is a lot less daunting and more fun to be using libraries in this ecosystem. And surprising…

> we all just wanted java with JIT, more feature rich type system Java has JIT. How is TypeSript type system feature-richer than the Java one?

1. *Type Inference*: TypeScript can automatically infer types from context, reducing the need for explicit type declarations. 2. *Union and Intersection Types*: Allows combining multiple types, offering more flexibility in defining data structures. 3. *Literal Types*: TypeScript supports exact values as types (e.g., specific strings or numbers), which can be useful for more precise type-checking. 4. *Type Aliases*: You can create custom, reusable types, enhancing code clarity and maintainability. 5. *Interfaces and Structural Typing*: Interfaces allow for flexible contracts, and TypeScript uses structural typing, where the type compatibility is based on the shape of the data rather than explicit type declarations. 6. *Mapped and Conditional Types*: These allow for dynamic type creation and manipulation, making the type system more powerful and expressive. 7. *Optional Properties and Strict Null Checks*: These provide better handling of undefined and null values.

Re: Node.js adds experimental support for TypeScript

#112

Post by btown »

mattnewton wrote: post #55
winter_blue wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flow (by Facebook) used to be fairly significant in the JavaScript several years ago, but right now it's somewhat clear that TypeScript has won rather handily.

Before that there was the closure compiler (Google) which had type annotations in comments. The annotation syntax in comments was a little clunky but overall that project was ahead of it's time. Now I believe even inside google that has been transpiled to typescript (or typescript is being transpiled to closure, I can't remember which - the point is that the typescript interface is what people are using for new code)…

Google’s Closure Library is fascinating too. It’s being retired, but if you want to build a rich text interface for email authoring that truly feels like Gmail, warts and all, you can just use a pre-compiled version of the library and follow https://github.com/google/closure-library/blob/master/closur... within a more modern codebase!

Re: Node.js adds experimental support for TypeScript

#113

Post by tommica »

jimvdv wrote: post #94
iansinnott wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconded again. While tsx usually just works ts-node almost never just works. tsx is perhaps unfortunately named though so it may confuse people at first since it has nothing to do with jsx syntax.

Thank you for bringing this up, I almost ignored this project since I assumed it had something to do with TypeScript + JSX. The JS ecosystem sure struggles with naming things.

The _programming_ ecosystem sure struggles with naming things.

Re: Node.js adds experimental support for TypeScript

#114

Post by spaceheater »

yashap wrote: post #46
Shacklz wrote: post #28

I'm honestly giddy. This could be the (slow) beginning of a new era, where "JS with types" is finally a native thing. I'm even willing to forgive all the mess that CJS vs. ESM is if they manage to pull this off. I hope this sees widespread adoption/usage, which might finally cause some movement to integrate TS into ecmascript after all. Some dynamically-typed language fanatics (which are, in my opinion, completely de…

Yeah, my personal experience is that easily 95% of devs I work with/have met in person, if not closer to 99%, prefer statically typed languages. Maybe that’s a biased sample, but I do think the overall preference among devs is very strong. I also see JS slowly, more-or-less becoming TypeScript over time.

Let's make it 94 then. I think typescript is an abomination forced by java developers that don't want to learn javascript.

Re: Node.js adds experimental support for TypeScript

#115

Post by Doxin »

pansa2 wrote: post #34

If Node.js can run TypeScript files directly, then the TypeScript compiler won't need to strip types and convert to JavaScript - it could be used solely as a type checker. This would be similar to the situation in Python, where type checkers check types and leave them intact, and the Python interpreter just ignores them. It's interesting, though, that this approach in Python has led to several (4?) different popular…

> In Python, I've even heard of people writing types in source code but never checking them, essentially using type hints as a more convenient syntax for comments.

Note that there's IDEs that'll use type hints to improve autocomplete and the like too, so even when not checking types it can make sense to add them in some places.

Re: Node.js adds experimental support for TypeScript

#116

Post by seanmcdirmid »

qalmakka wrote: post #106
harshitaneja wrote: post #88

I really enjoy typescript and have been yearning for a typescript runtime but I can't help but laugh that I left java all those years ago to finally seek something a lot closer to java. I guess we all just wanted java with JIT, more feature rich type system and gradual typing. Also for all the shortcomings of npm ecosystem, it is a lot less daunting and more fun to be using libraries in this ecosystem. And surprising…

> we all just wanted java with JIT Java was literally the thing that made the term "JIT" popular, so I really don't know what you were going for here. Also I just can't see how Typescript is in any way "closer" to Java - it's incredibly different IMHO. The only thing they have in common is probably the "Javascript" misnomer and the fact both support imperative programming, but that's it.

Typescript’s optional and unsound type system also does nothing for a JIT beyond what it could already do for JavaScript, you can’t do optimization if your types are unreliable. However, I really really like how Typescript’s type system super charges developer productivity (type errors via the compiler and feedback via the IDE), and don’t mind this part of the design at all.

Re: Node.js adds experimental support for TypeScript

#117

Post by hackandthink »

samtheprogram wrote: post #9

Bun’s DX is pretty unprecedented in this space, and most of my use cases are now covered / not causing Bun to crash (when actually using run-scripts with `bun run`). Meanwhile, I can’t configure node to not require extensions on import, nor have tsc configured to automatically add .js extensions to its compiled output, without adding on a bundler… although native TypeScript support would remedy this nit quite a bit,…

"nor have tsc configured to automatically add .js extensions to its compiled output"

It seems to be the default now:

  $echo 'console.log("test")' > t.ts
  $ tsc t.ts
  $ ls
  t.js  t.ts
  $ node t.js
  test

Re: Node.js adds experimental support for TypeScript

#118

Post by wiktor-k »

miki123211 wrote: post #89
mattnewton wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before that there was the closure compiler (Google) which had type annotations in comments. The annotation syntax in comments was a little clunky but overall that project was ahead of it's time. Now I believe even inside google that has been transpiled to typescript (or typescript is being transpiled to closure, I can't remember which - the point is that the typescript interface is what people are using for new code)…

Closure was also interesting because it integrated type checking and minification, which made minification significantly more useful. With normal Javascript and typescript, you can't minify property names, so `foo.bar.doSomethingVeryComplicated()` can only be turned into `a.bar.doSomethingVeryComplicated()`, not `a.b.c()`, like with Closure. This is because objects can be indexed by strings. Something like `foo.bar[f…

> Something like `foo.bar[function]()` is perfectly valid JS,

A minor thing but `function` is a keyword in JS so technically it's not a "perfectly valid JS".

Re: Node.js adds experimental support for TypeScript

#119

Post by tpm »

VMG wrote: post #111
zx8080 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we all just wanted java with JIT, more feature rich type system Java has JIT. How is TypeSript type system feature-richer than the Java one?

1. *Type Inference*: TypeScript can automatically infer types from context, reducing the need for explicit type declarations. 2. *Union and Intersection Types*: Allows combining multiple types, offering more flexibility in defining data structures. 3. *Literal Types*: TypeScript supports exact values as types (e.g., specific strings or numbers), which can be useful for more precise type-checking. 4. *Type Aliases*: Y…

That's just an copy-paste of some features, not a comparison with Java which does most of that too.

Re: Node.js adds experimental support for TypeScript

#120

Post by zarzavat »

One thing to note is that it is impossible to strip types from TypeScript without a grammar of TypeScript. Stripping types is not a token-level operation, and the TypeScript grammar is changing all the time.

Consider for example: `foo ( x )`. In TypeScript 1.5 this parsed as (foo (x)) because bar&baz wasn’t a valid type expression yet. When the type intersection operator was added, the parse changed to foo(x) which desugared to foo(x). I realise I’m going back in time here but it’s a nice simple example.

If you want to continue to use new TypeScript features you are going to need to keep compiling to JS, or else keep your node version up to date. For people who like to stick on node LTS releases this may be an unacceptable compromise.

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