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Figma’s Journey to TypeScript

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Re: Figma’s Journey to TypeScript

#71

It’s interesting to read comment threads of people that are dead set against Typescript. It’s a tool that has very few downsides and that improves nearly every single line of code you write. Either they’re scared to learn something new, not willing to take the time, or misunderstanding how useful it is. For anyone reading these comments and agreeing with Typescript naysayers, I would think more about why the commente…

Some people also hate parking between the lines and returning shopping carts at the grocery store. Those are similar in that they have negative value to the individual but help the community around them. TS often can interrupt an individual's flow, so feels like a negative value. It's only when the whole team is using it on a bigger codebase with lots of changes that the benefits start to manifest.

Imagine you come from a small town where there are no parking lines at all, and everyone efficiently parks on unmarked blacktop in a respectful way.

Now imagine you go to a big city where they have a bunch of lines in the parking lot and people only half use them correctly, parking over the lines, diagonal, etc.

The existence of lines doesn't guarantee good behavior. The absence of lines doesn't guarantee bad behavior.

This is the argument I see for javascript-only folks who don't necessary enjoy using "the worlds most bloated javascript linter"

For the record, I am a Typescript enjoyer and I use it in my personal projects as well as professionally, but even I can admit that it's not automatically superior to javascript and it has a number of really frustrating and time-consuming downsides.

It's very easy to type the args and returns of a function and protect callers, but it's much more challenging to work with types between libraries and APIs all together. Lots of `as unknown as Type` or even the dreaded `any` to try and cobble the stack together.

Re: Figma’s Journey to TypeScript

#72
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It does smell like someone's pet project. "Smell" has negative connotations in English. If you say that "this code smells" it means it's bad, and likewise it's very easy to read your "It does smell like" as you meaning it's a bad thing.

Thank you for the English lesson, but it's a big leap from this supposed connotation to "painting pet projects black".

Not so great a leap; every part of your comment implies you think they made a strange decision going the route of using someone's pet project.

Re: Figma’s Journey to TypeScript

#73
post #69
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As anything - "it depends"™. I did not notice "every single line of code" getting better at all. Yes, it makes things easier on a large team where people do not have time to do codebase discovery - or where people are moved to be highly interchangeable, on big codebases. Yes, static verification can help those teams and those codebases. But it also introduces a lot of extra work "just to appease the type system". It…

Small projects have a habit of getting bigger and small teams have a habit of growing also - usually to deal with the mess of the small project that is now bigger

Is that a bad thing? If you're building an MVP, do you really worry about how 2k developers are going to work on this 10 years from now?

Requirements change and the code base needs to adjust with those requirements, that's gonna happen no matter what. I've met a lot of people trying to predict future requirements, deciding to overenginer today for a brighter future. I have very rarely seen anyone guess the future requirements accurately.

Re: Figma’s Journey to TypeScript

#74

It’s interesting to read comment threads of people that are dead set against Typescript. It’s a tool that has very few downsides and that improves nearly every single line of code you write. Either they’re scared to learn something new, not willing to take the time, or misunderstanding how useful it is. For anyone reading these comments and agreeing with Typescript naysayers, I would think more about why the commente…

[flagged]

Re: Figma’s Journey to TypeScript

#76

It’s interesting to read comment threads of people that are dead set against Typescript. It’s a tool that has very few downsides and that improves nearly every single line of code you write. Either they’re scared to learn something new, not willing to take the time, or misunderstanding how useful it is. For anyone reading these comments and agreeing with Typescript naysayers, I would think more about why the commente…

I'm not against TypeScript, but I don't really see the massive advantage. I rarely see problems that are due to typing, and the downside is usually limited as I keep my JS on the frontend, not the backend. Regular JS/ES6 just flows better.

Re: Figma’s Journey to TypeScript

#77
post #73
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small projects have a habit of getting bigger and small teams have a habit of growing also - usually to deal with the mess of the small project that is now bigger

Is that a bad thing? If you're building an MVP, do you really worry about how 2k developers are going to work on this 10 years from now? Requirements change and the code base needs to adjust with those requirements, that's gonna happen no matter what. I've met a lot of people trying to predict future requirements, deciding to overenginer today for a brighter future. I have very rarely seen anyone guess the future req…

Small projects become bigger projects much faster than that! I’m not suggesting that anybody should think too far ahead when it comes to building mvps, but if it’s a choice between a typed language and a dynamic one like JavaScript, baking a poor decision in early is going to hurt later. And later is much sooner than you think.

That’s not going to negatively affect your initial velocity, if it does, the team isn’t strong enough.

If the project is just a one off website or something genuinely small, sure, who cares? Otherwise it's worth realising that you'll be dealing with the fallout of poor early decisions pretty quickly.

Re: Figma’s Journey to TypeScript

#78

It’s interesting to read comment threads of people that are dead set against Typescript. It’s a tool that has very few downsides and that improves nearly every single line of code you write. Either they’re scared to learn something new, not willing to take the time, or misunderstanding how useful it is. For anyone reading these comments and agreeing with Typescript naysayers, I would think more about why the commente…

People think typescript is really the silver bullet. If a developer writes crappy code, using tool x will not make him write great code. and the tool may not improve the project either. It's really tiring to work with people like you who are morbidly in love with a tool.

Re: Figma’s Journey to TypeScript

#79

It’s interesting to read comment threads of people that are dead set against Typescript. It’s a tool that has very few downsides and that improves nearly every single line of code you write. Either they’re scared to learn something new, not willing to take the time, or misunderstanding how useful it is. For anyone reading these comments and agreeing with Typescript naysayers, I would think more about why the commente…

[deleted]

Re: Figma’s Journey to TypeScript

#80

It’s interesting to read comment threads of people that are dead set against Typescript. It’s a tool that has very few downsides and that improves nearly every single line of code you write. Either they’re scared to learn something new, not willing to take the time, or misunderstanding how useful it is. For anyone reading these comments and agreeing with Typescript naysayers, I would think more about why the commente…

Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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