[patrec]

> I was trying to figure out what compose was supposed to return (the function or the value), in that case, and I still don't really know.

It returns a function. The one that's equivalent to applying the arguments in reverse order. I think that this signature is pretty clear for anyone experienced with a statically typed language with generics and higher order functions.

On the other hand, I have no idea why a compose function that takes exactly 6 arguments, the last of which is function which takes 3 arguments would be a desirable abstraction. But I don't think static typing is necessarily to blame for this -- this just looks like a clunky function that has a clunky type.

I'm fully with you on the second example though.

[solardev]

> I think that this signature is pretty clear for anyone experienced with a statically typed language with generics and higher order functions.

Sounds like I have stuff to study!

Maybe ramda was an extreme example (with or without typescript, it was so hard to read that our dev team decided to just remove it altogether and replace it with more verbose but easier to read vanillaJS code or equivalent lodash functions). But I come across difficult TypeScript examples nearly every day of my work, where I feel like I'm reading an obfuscated leetcode challenge instead of the straightforward business logic in the rest of the codebase.

Once I finally understand a complex type, my usual reaction is, "That's it? That's all that was trying to express?" It's just an arcane syntax to me. Sounds like learning about generics and higher-order functions in statically typed languages would be a good starting place... thanks!

[valenterry]

From what you are writing, you really lack the basics here. Learning on the job is fine, but sometimes it's worth to spent dedicated time to learn foundations or at least get someone on board who can teach them.

I suggest to try to get your boss to sponsor this, since you need it for the job. It will also make your dev experience so much more fun!

[solardev]

For sure. I am no TypeScript expert, and for the most part I don't really need to be... most of our types are pretty straightforward, arrays of strings and such.

Learning is great, but this job, like many others, doesn't really have a well-defined system for training, documentation, professional development, or anything like that. Either I learn on the job as it happens or I don't learn at all. There's always too much to build, with constantly shifting priorities defined and redefined by higher-ups who don't know or care what TypeScript is. Sure, I can push back on that to some degree and beg for a resource or two, but even that is difficult, and there's always so much else that's even more pressing to learn. And web dev by its nature is a broad and shallow career anyway, especially on the frontend... by the time you begin to master something, it's already obsolete lol.

TypeScript looks like it'll have some staying power, so I'm happy to learn it as I go. But over time, I've learned to stop chasing perfection and to just go for "Will this survive long enough until the rewrite in a year or two? If so, good enough...". I've never known a job like this where code survives longer than 2 or 3 years before someone, either a dev or a manager, wants to rewrite it from scratch.

A lot of our existing codebase was written by contractors who had a lot of experience, but little desire to document anything or comment anywhere. Our current generation of (relatively junior) devs inherited that, has trouble with a lot of it, and ends up rewriting large overengineered swaths in simpler patterns as we go. A complete rewrite is already planned. And so the cycle continues :)

In general, the barrier to entry for JS/web dev is pretty low, and so there are a lot of low-to-med skilled devs like me in the industry. I think, philosophically, I lean against writing code that is overly "clever" rather than readable. Similarly with types. If a typing becomes complex enough that it's not really readable, I'd rather just leave a clear comment as to what the intent is and then move on, knowing that the code itself -- much less its typing -- is unlikely to survive long anyway. At the end of the day, IMO, it doesn't make sense to have types that are more complicated than the code itself... if correctness is important but the typing is complicated, I try to break down the code itself, add comments, add unit tests, add documentation, etc. rather than try to coerce TypeScript into sentience.

Is that the most "correct" way? Probably not. But it sure makes things easier to read in PRs rather than telling everyone, "Well, you need to learn advanced TypeScript if you want to read my contribs."

[valenterry]

I think I see where you come from. And for libraries and even frameworks I would agree.

But typescripts advanced features are more like advanced SQL. Sure, you'll learn some chunk specific to your database, but the majority will be transferable. And just like SQL it won't become outdated knowledge in the next decades most likely.

So I still think it will be worth. If not for the company then at least for yourself. :)

[solardev]

That's a good point. Like even if TypeScript goes away, some other language will still use generics and higher order functions. I can see the value in that!

[patrec]

My 2 cents: I think the fact that you're having trouble with the compose signature is something you should rectify and that would transfer well to other languages. I'm however not sure the same holds true for more advanced features of typescript.

I'm only a casual user, so take this with more than a grain of salt, but for me typescript occupies quite a weird point in statically typed language space: on the other hand, typescript's type system is enormously complex (and also quite expressive). Part, but I don't think all of this, comes from being retrofitted onto a untyped language and its ecosystem (so e.g. sum-types tend to be implicit rather than tagged, and in addition to discriminated unsions, there is support for complex sub-typing from the OO heritage). Most statically typed languages have no direct equivalent for many of typescript's more advanced features (e.g. partial types, although Scala and Ocaml have related constructs, in Ocaml's case e.g. polymorphic variants).

But on the other hand it's surprisingly awkward to get what I would consider one of the most basic and beneficial features of a sane statically typed language, namely exhaustiveness checks -- so most people don't even bother. In fact there is not even an agreed upon idiom (just google "exhaustiveness check typescript", all the answers will look spuriously different). The basic pattern is that you want a helper function like so:

   function assertUnreachable(_value: never): never {
     throw new Error("Statement should be unreachable");
   }

and then for any switch(foo) you do an default: assertUnreachable(foo). I can't really fathom why there isn't a better way to express this (the ability is clearly there, but it's un-ergonomic). But if you want something that transfers well, I'd probably de-emphasize the fancy stuff typescript offers unless needed for acceptable JS interop and concentrate more on thinking about exhaustiveness and making undesirable states unrepresentable.