this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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What's going on with typescript? (self.outoftheloop)
submitted 1 year ago by odium to c/[email protected]
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I keep seeing posts of some drama with typescript. What happened?

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I'm not really involved in javascript land so im parroting off of what i've heard for "why js over ts?"

  • it reduces file size since you no longer need to ship source maps
  • ctrl+clicking stuff will take you to the definition rather than an unhelpful type declaration
  • if you spot a bug in the library, you can edit the source directly than having to recompile/reimport
  • ts adds some unnecessary type "gymnastics" (can't speak for what this means), when all they really want is intellisense thru jsdoc

So mainly: devs who don't prefer strongly typed languages, and library devs who find typescript to be less transparent and more time consuming for new and old contributors than it's worth

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)
  1. Why do you have to ship a source map? It compiles to vanilla js
  2. Not sure what editor, but in neovim (which uses tsserver on my end for LSP) I can either jump to the type declaration or the actual implementation. This is a tooling problem not inherent to typescript
  3. This doesn't make any sense. You'd have the same problem with minified js or css etc.
  4. It means they are forced to use types properly and do the tiniest bit of thinking and planning that results in fewer type errors (think undefined variables and properties, etc)

Not a bad summary, but I take issue with all the points

Edit: The sourcemap comment is relevant to package size and not to final bundle size per the HN comment linked below. Also, the cmd+click critique rings truer now that I know it's in the context of an installed package. Another critique is build time which is fair enough.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I understand why some hobbyist individuals with small-ish scripts might not see the value, even though I even still disagree there.

The more code and people touching the code, the more value you'll see.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Hell I even write my tiny userscripts in TS and compile it to JS. The editor/"intellisense" support is nice

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Thanks :) I didn't see anyone mention the points made by the svelte guys https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35892250 which is a shame since I thought they made better points than the dramatic "type gymnastics" argument haha (i am biased toward type-safety, as long as there is idiomatic, algebraic data types w/ pattern matching)

Overall it sounds like a major change with a few minor/moderate benefits, but it's their choice and time will tell if it was worth it :P