[cryptica]

>> javascript codebases become read only :-D

This is BS. I've built very large JS projects with hundreds of thousands of lines and never had this problem. If your architecture is well designed and modular then refactorings are easy and localized to just a small number of files. On the other hand, TypeScript encourages spaghetti code which makes refactorings span more files; complex active instances end up getting passed around all over the place and makes your code brittle and fully dependent on TypeScript to make any changes.

TypeScript allows you to write a lot of spaghetti code and allows you to delay having to think about architecture until your code is a total complete unmaintainable mess.

With JS, you will discover if you architecture is a mess a lot sooner and you will learn more and adapt faster.

[incadenza]

How specifically does the addition of static typing encourage spaghetti code?

[davidjnelson]

Glad you enjoy large javascript projects and it works well for you.

Architecture is important regardless of what language you are using.

[cryptica]

Thanks. I feel like there should be a lot less discussion about tools and a lot more discussion about architecture. I find that with good architecture, the language doesn't really matter at all.

I've built high quality very complex projects in both JavaScript and TypeScript (both alone and as a team lead). My point is that I (and people of my skill level) can complete the project/subproject much faster with JavaScript so it gives me a lot more extra time to write tests.

[marcosdumay]

Yes, architecture is important, but you can't architecture away neither errors nor domain complexity.

Besides, your language is the largest constrain you'll have on your program architecture.