Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not about reading, it's about the tooling you need to set it up. JS initial strengh was ease of dev for beginers. Throw in a transpiler, a dependancy manager, a package manager, a bundler with FS watching, and source maps and what you got is wall for the very same type of dev that were producing all those fantastic jQuery plugins 10 years ago. And actually even for me. I do know how to install and use all those.…
> It's not about reading, it's about the tooling you need to set it up. npm install typescript -g This is the only addition on top of vanilla js, which is what you should be comparing with instead of the massive crap of build-tool-of-the-month. All said and done, if you're using those build tools in typescript, you'd be using them for javascript as well.
First you need to install node.
Then you need to install typescript.
Then you need to setup something that watch the typescript files and transpile them when they change. Because no, running a command everytime you change a letter in the file is not acceptable.
Then you need to integrate that in your static assets pipeline (minifiers, linters, git hooks, i18n extraction, whatever). Because files changes and are generated on the fly, and you probably use a framework that already interact with them in some way.
Then you need to make sure it's part of your deployment process, including continuous integration. Because the typescript command now must be in your builder scripts, travis files, docker container, etc.
Then you need to setup your browser to read the source map. Because debugging a transpiler without a source map is hell on earth.
Then you need to setup your IDE to understand typescript. Yeah, most editors don't understand type script.
Then you need to document that, and train yours colleagues. They don't have the same OS, versions, editors, experience than each others.
What's that, you spend 2 hours trying to help a new commer in your team on skype to find out you just don't have the same version of type script ? What's that you have a concurrency problem between several FS watchers ? What's that, somebody commited the transpiled files on the git repo by mistake and now some edge case made the travis build fail ?
Saying "it's just npm install" is disrespectful, at best. It's NOT a 5 minutes job. It is work.