[josephg]

You can list variants of a function's signature in typescript, but typescript won't help you much with "stringly typed" things (like `.addClass('name1,name2,nameN')`).

Different languages have a grain like wood does. And that subtly directs you by making some things ergonomic and some things difficult to express. I love typescript, but I definitely find it changes the resulting code.

Typescript makes "jQuery style" javascript much more awkward to write, because its harder to type. This is good and bad. I write less scrappy code in typescript - which I think makes it a worse language for quick prototyping. But the tradeoff is that I think its a better language for larger teams / longer lasting projects where functions are read a lot more than they're written.

The actual typescript answer for your API is "don't make your API look like that". Its not always the answer you're looking for.

[WorldMaker]

With "template string literal" types TS has gotten incredible at "stringly typed" APIs (more powerful than just about any other type language in existence in this arena, from what I've seen). People have done incredible things with it and its Turing Complete possibilities (including entire games playable in TS types). With great power comes great responsibility, and just because Typescript can do a lot of it now, doesn't mean that you should do it in Typescript.