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Node.js is able to execute TypeScript files without additional configuration

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Re: Node.js is able to execute TypeScript files without additional configuration

#141

Post by chamomeal »

rovingeye wrote: post #133
quectophoton wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But... that's like half the reason why I wanted this feature... Writing a library in TypeScript (with typechecks in CI/CD as devDependencies) and just importing it directly from Node.js...

It was the first thing I tried and of course it didn't work. It might finally be time to switch to Deno or Bun =(

I switched to deno for new projects ~1 year ago and it’s only been joy. There’s a shockingly small amount of friction to switch over, and there are so so many benefits

Re: Node.js is able to execute TypeScript files without additional configuration

#142

Post by ItsHarper »

d357r0y3r wrote: post #121
madeofpalk wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. It's 2025 and the node ecosystem is finally usable by default! ESM modules just work with both Node and Typescript, Node can run .ts files, and there's the a good enough test runner built in. --watch. The better built in packages - `node:fs/promises` - are nice with top-level await for easier async loops. It took a while to convince everyone involved to just be pragmatic, but it's nice now.

What's the story with supporting CommonJS libraries? I've tried to update many projects to ESM multiple times over the years, and every time, I ended up backing out because it turned out that there was some important upstream library that was still CommonJS - or even if we fixed those issues, our downstream NPM consumers wouldn't be able to consume EJS. So then you have to go down this rabbit hole of dual compilation…

It's possible, but it can be weird and difficult: https://nodejs.org/docs/latest-v17.x/api/esm.html#esm_common...

Thankfully, actively-maintained CommonJS-only packages are quite rare by this point (in my experience).

> our downstream NPM consumers wouldn't be able to consume EJS

Node.js 20.17 and later supports loading ESM using `require()`: https://nodejs.org/api/modules.html#loading-ecmascript-modul...

The next version of Babel (currently in beta) is even going ESM-only.

Re: Node.js is able to execute TypeScript files without additional configuration

#143

Post by chamomeal »

bsimpson wrote: post #125
primering wrote: post #102

It's not able to execute TypeScript, but a subset of it. The claim in the title is misleading if not totally wrong. This will unfortunately drive people towards using TS only as a linter, and not use its powerful features that are inherently impossible to implement with just type stripping.

I thought TS abandoned stuff that can't just be stripped. Besides enum, what do you use that isn't strippable?

I guess decorators. Which are quite powerful but I’ve never seen them used outside of libraries/frameworks that use them (angular, certain ORMs, nestjs?)

As a personal taste I don’t really like decorators that much, but it’s true that nestjs projects (which is probably a majority of new backend TS projects) will not gain anything from this release. Then again, you always set nestjs up with a template anyway that has all of the tooling and building baked in. So whatevs.

It’s still a huge huge win, and I finally have hope for typescript-ifying some horrible legacy node apps at work!!

Re: Node.js is able to execute TypeScript files without additional configuration

#144

Post by tyleo »

I’m curious what the benefit of stuff like this is vs tsc --watch and running the JS?

I’ve always just run tsc to a .gitignored’d directory and execute my JS from there.

Edit: Thanks for the responses. There’s some great examples in there!

Re: Node.js is able to execute TypeScript files without additional configuration

#145

Post by edem »

lunarcave wrote: post #45

I think this + node:test makes Node.js a pretty compelling sensible default for most things now. Running things with `tsx` was such a QoL improvement when it happened, but it didn't solve everything. Runtime type assertion at the edges is mostly solved through `zod` and tools like `ts-rest` and `trpc` makes it so much easier to do full-stack Typescript these days.

i switched to python a while ago. it has batteries included. i feel so much better now that i dont have to debug all the quirks of a half-baked system.

Re: Node.js is able to execute TypeScript files without additional configuration

#146

Post by throwanem »

tyleo wrote: post #144

I’m curious what the benefit of stuff like this is vs tsc --watch and running the JS? I’ve always just run tsc to a .gitignored’d directory and execute my JS from there. Edit: Thanks for the responses. There’s some great examples in there!

It's faster and a good bit more convenient in greenfield, in my experience. Less safe in that you do still need a type checker, but nothing about Node's stripping is at all meant for more than experimental use anyway so that's fine.

Re: Node.js is able to execute TypeScript files without additional configuration

#147

Post by hungryhobbit »

rmonvfer wrote: post #100

I’m not a heavy JS/TS dev so here’s an honest question: why not use Bun and forget about node? Sure I understand that not every project is evergreen but isn’t Bun a much runtime in general? It supports TS execution from day 1, has much faster dependency resolution, better ergonomics… and I could keep going. I know I’m just a single data point but I’ve had a lot of success migrating old node projects to bun (in fact I…

Bun is still a toddler: it's not ready for primetime.

Simple example: you know how at the command line you can type "npm run", and then type a character or two, hit tab, and the appropriate script from your `package.json` will autocomplete? And if you keep going (eg. "npm run knex") you can do the same thing to autocomplete arguments?

Bun still hasn't figured out how to do that (https://github.com/oven-sh/bun/issues/6037), even though they can all but copy NPM's (already written) completions. I really liked using bun when I played around with it (and it ran my codebase perfectly, without issue) ... but if they can't handle something as simple as Bash completions, they're clearly not ready for the big leagues.

Re: Node.js is able to execute TypeScript files without additional configuration

#148

Post by throwanem »

hliyan wrote: post #140
madeofpalk wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. It's 2025 and the node ecosystem is finally usable by default! ESM modules just work with both Node and Typescript, Node can run .ts files, and there's the a good enough test runner built in. --watch. The better built in packages - `node:fs/promises` - are nice with top-level await for easier async loops. It took a while to convince everyone involved to just be pragmatic, but it's nice now.

This is great to hear, but perhaps comes too late for people like myself. Node.js has been by go-to platform from around 2014 until last year. But around September last year, I found myself thrust into the .NET ecosystem (due to a client project). Within a few months, I realized that it too, had finally become usable by default (unlike the last time I tried it, when it was too tightly coupled to Windows). In fact, it…

Interesting. I haven't looked hard at .Net despite some advocacy from past colleagues. Perhaps I should.

Re: Node.js is able to execute TypeScript files without additional configuration

#149

Post by homebrewer »

tyleo wrote: post #144

I’m curious what the benefit of stuff like this is vs tsc --watch and running the JS? I’ve always just run tsc to a .gitignored’d directory and execute my JS from there. Edit: Thanks for the responses. There’s some great examples in there!

I've been using this for helper scripts, where each script is its own entry point, to assist with various maintenance tasks in frontend projects. Much easier to clone the project and run `./scripts/frobnicate` than faff around with tsc. Previously they would have been written in pure JS or just bash.

Re: Node.js is able to execute TypeScript files without additional configuration

#150

Post by throwanem »

masfuerte wrote: post #87
ohmahjong wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a typo in "pendantic" is a masterstroke

> "pendantic" Genius!

One more time and it's pentadic. But imagine someone finding a way to bikeshed anti-bikeshedding tools. "Take with food."
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