[keawade]

I disagree that TypeScript comes with only a marginal upside. In my experience TypeScript projects are much more approachable for contributors.

For example, I once was debugging an issue in a JS framework and while I knew what was wrong and where I could fix it I didn’t have any idea what existing tools I had available in that context to fix it. Having type definitions would have made that work much simpler by increasing the accessibility of the code base.

It’s experiences like this that have convinced me that if I’m writing code that any one will possibly read or need to modify later (including if it is just me) then I should be writing TypeScript instead of JavaScript. Or, more generally, that it should be typed.

[datavirtue]

Raw JavaScript in any production app is an abomination. Constant issues because one of the variables had a errant character. Countless bugs because of the same or it not being defined. On top of all that how in the hell am I supposed to know what a parameter or return value is supposed to look like? I have other things to worry about. I think these type annotations would make everyone happy. The IDE can navigate and inform but the objects will still need to be defined somewhere. I assume we can define a custom type with these annotations?

[shadowgovt]

You and OP are both right, because it really depends on what you're doing.

At the scale I operate, it would be corporate suicide to try and write this code in straight JavaScript without type support. But for smaller teams, more focused teams, and teams that use a heavy testing discipline or enforced naming conventions that supplement the lack of static typing, it's not a problem.

[lostcolony]

Your basic disagreement here feels like it would be obviated by the parents "I hope this makes its way into the ECMAscript spec"? I.e., you would get typing without any of the tooling Typescript requires; the parent's point was JS + typing would be a pure benefit compared to Typescript, and you've said nothing to disagree with that.

So while you technically are disagreeing with the parent, it's on the smallest of points, and completely disregarding the main one the parent offered (which, fair enough, but wanted to point that out)

[pwdisswordfish9]

What does "while I knew what was wrong and where I could fix it I didn’t have any idea what existing tools I had available in that context to fix it" mean?

[NoWizards]

I couldn't disagree more with you... All i see when working with different levels of experienced contributors is param:any any[]. Even more when you want to interact directly with DOM instead of using an opinionated framework.

[selfmodruntime]

You‘re blaming the active misuse of a tool on the tool itself.

[EMM_386]

This is why "no-explicit-any" should be enforced in every project.

https://github.com/typescript-eslint/typescript-eslint/blob/...

[david422]

This is either just code that is too complicated or devs that aren't doing a good job of type hinting.

Everytime there is an any, it means that each developer reading or modifying this code has to find it out for themselves - every single time. Why not just type hint it correctly in the first place.

[danielvaughn]

I'm one of those `any` developers, and can attest to the first scenario. Had a client ask me to fix a bug in a repo that I wasn't familiar with. I spin it up, start looking through the code, and it's this massively over-engineered beast. 27K lines of Angular code to support a 2 page SPA that's basically just a note taking app.

Anyways, it's TS, and I don't know TS but I know how typing works so I can make my way around. I need to alter an interface to fix the bug, but with all the code it's very difficult to tell whether the change will break something either in the compiler or at runtime. To add on top of all that, the client needed the change to go out that day.

So guess what's going to happen? I'm using fucking `any` and I don't care.

Ultimately, this is why I don't like TS. I think it's a great idea, but if you look at all the energy that has been spent moving code over to TS from JS, and all the type definitions that were written into existing NPM packages, I have to ask myself why we don't just pursue making types native to JS? I don't want to write a secondary language that compiles to JS.

[Chyzwar]

> Anyways, it's TS, and I don't know TS but I know how typing works so I can make my way around. I need to alter an interface to fix the bug, but with all the code it's very difficult to tell whether the change will break something either in the compiler or at runtime. To add on top of all that, the client needed the change to go out that day.

It is massively easier to make change to large TS codebase. Just because you never bothered to learn TS and you rush feature at cost to maintenance, do not mean it is TS fault.

> Ultimately, this is why I don't like TS. I think it's a great idea, but if you look at all the energy that has been spent moving code over to TS from JS, and all the type definitions that were written into existing NPM packages, I have to ask myself why we don't just pursue making types native to JS? I don't want to write a secondary language that compiles to JS.

Because native types would create even more fragmentation while being less powerful than TS. JS was never intended for application development, we either embrace compilers or move away from language that have pathetic standard library, dynamic and complex type coercion rules, no stable module system, lack of strong leadership and legacy of supporting IE.