[nobleach]

I like your take on Kotlin being Typescript with a better build system. I often show our Kotlin devs our Typescript apps and say, "see, it's very close... we just add semicolons". Many of them are former Java devs, so they're used to blindly believing, "JavaScript == bad". (yes, everyone can see what I did there) I like showing that it can actually be quite good in some ways. For high performance db crunching, I strongly prefer Kotlin. But for pure network services, REST request to sending files via SFTP, Typescript is really nice.

[BossingAround]

That said, there's still a lot to be desired in JS's ecosystem. The difference between JS libraries and Java libraries is huge.

The package manager (npm) also has a lot of room for improvements. I have a small SPA with like 15 files and a couple of dependencies, where updating one dependency has broken my environment and I had to reinstall another underlying dependency (typically a typings package). I just miss Maven.

To say that TS is like Kotlin is true superficially, but I must say I have faced many more "wtf" moments with TS because of weird glitches of the tooling, or packages, or something similar.

I really want to love TS and JS, but the more I develop in it, the less likely I am to reach for it in my next project.

[soulnothing]

This sort of echoes what I meant by in my opinion the build system is better on Kotlin, if not more complex. My opinion of course.

Using a library from a big tech vendor I found a number of issues with the definition files. That led to me tossing in ts ignore all over the place, and asking if I could file bug reports on company time. Lerna is the closest for a good multi module project. But that has a number of quirks.

As an aside I keep harping on multi module. But I find they really help with service boundaries, and flow of the application. Allowing dependencies to flow from bottom to top like a pyramid.

The other day I was working on a new proof of concept tool. I started with type script because that's what the team was using. But after cloning the demo from the vendor, it didn't minimize into proper java script. It seemed to be a known bug. I redid it in Kotlin in an hour. Because of the syntactic similarity, the team was able to pick it up. Worked on the first try. Now we just need to fix the TS build.

Incidentally these tooling issues are the bigger plague of the js multi platform. Dukat while great is only as good as the type definitions. There are also so many incongruities with the output. I've come to if I just output js I'm fine. But don't try consuming js. This also was the issue with rescript/reasonml to me.

I can output common websocket/http clients via ktor. Data classes, and other elements. But we have async api, open api, graphql, etc. The core of the multi platform driving business logic is being eaten by good automated tools. What's old is new.