[icxa]

Tangentially, but in a similar vein, this is my gripe with TypeScript: It leads you down a path that takes the best part of JavaScript out: namely it's dynamicity, and prototypical object orientation, and leaves you with a hamstrung, not-so-good statically typed OO language. When you view it in that light, it hardly stands up to other options out there, IMO of course.

That's why I was lead to something like ReasonML because it solved the things I was already trying to do with my front end code (keep my renders in React immutable, minimize side effects, use more functional paradigms, have strong typing), but it did it with a much more powerful functional language, with a world class type system in which only Haskell rivals.

[eropple]

TypeScript does not take out dynamic typing or prototypical object orientation. If you can more cleanly communicate something dynamically, do it. `any` is right there. (And I do this sometimes! Of course, code where I do this is invariably where most of my unit testing has to be, but I have the choice, and I'm making it.)

And, not to be pointy, but I always get a real weird vibe about people who come rolling in professing that TypeScript isn't a backhoe when it professes to be a shovel. TypeScript is not about a "world class type system" and that's never been the claim. It's about reducing the ways in which normal developers can shoot themselves in the foot. If ReasonML or whatever equally bloggable thing scratches your itch, sure, but you're never getting the 95th percentile of developers, to say nothing of the 50th, to write it--and that 50th, and that 95th, percentile can benefit from better tools, too.

[chenglou]

I see what you’re trying to say here, but Reason (and its compiler BuckleScript) aren’t the kind of puristic language folks might think they are. BuckleScript has one of the most comprehensive way to bind to whatever piece of JS you have: https://bucklescript.github.io/ and you can also just include raw JS code as a last resort, all type checked still, while keeping type soundness (in this case, almost like `any` but not really).

HN’s too short to describe the extent of it; if you’d like some language that shares a similar spirit as TypeScript (with extra features such as native compilation), please do check out Reason and BuckleScript. Our main goals are great JS interop, fast build, robust type system and a familiar syntax for JS users.

[eropple]

I'm familiar with the project, and with both F# and OCaml generally. ;) And I'm not saying it's bad or anything, to be clear. I am saying that it's functionally impenetrable to most programmers. To draw an analogy to something less contentious in this crowd, Elixir, even though I quite like it, is doomed to the same fate.

TypeScript is the good-enoughest thing that doesn't surprise, and I think that's enough to put it over the top. (It helps that, in this case, "good enough" is also "very good".)

[icxa]

Thank you for all the work you do btw -- Reason is awesome and I am having a lot of fun learning. Interop seemed daunting at first but after I tried it, it was a great experience.

[icxa]

> TypeScript does not take out dynamic typing or prototypical object orientation

Hence my wording, leads you down the path not forces you to. More often than not, your TypeScript codebase (at least the part you have written yourself or by your team) will be Classical OO style and fully typed, and your code reviews will consist of copious amounts of "we should add a type here"