[troupo]

> provide browsable documentation about the constraint its enforcing and how other places in the code resolve the constraint.

It doesn't provide "browsable documentation". It provides complex unreadable types that you have to painstakingly manually "compile" in your head to figure out what the hell is going on

[amw-zero]

That doesn’t seem like a fair characterization in all cases.

[troupo]

It's a fair characterization because it's a common enough issue to become a problem. It's a compounding of several issues, really, of which "types are documentation" is just one:

- types are not documentation

- tests are not documentation

- code is not documentation

[amw-zero]

What would you call the ability of a type to communicate information such as the range of values that can be passed into a function?

[troupo]

I'd call it exactly that.

Note that there are very few languages that have those kinds of types. Usually it's enums and union types that usually tell you nothing about where to get those ranges, why those ranges exactly, or what those ranges mean.

Literally right now I'm looking at a GraphQL schema that tells me that for a collection of lists of data it returns the following list types: Generic, GenericV2, Onboarding, OnboardingActive... That's it. Actual call returns only a few of those with no apparent difference in actual data.

It is typed though.

[amw-zero]

Can you look at which fields are required to make a value of type `Generic`, `GenericV2`, etc.?

[shadowgovt]

Generally (at least if we're talking typescript and vscode), the IDE serves as a REPL UI for the type system.

You don't have to compile in your head; you can declare a variable or assignment with some type property and see where an error is thrown.

[troupo]

For errors that can be automatically fixed by IDE, yes. It doesn't make this documentation ;)

I've seen quite a few cases where IDE's type expansion (whether on hover or in type errors) would result in a dozen lines of nested types. Worse than no documentation at all.

[shadowgovt]

A dozen lines of nested types are like a dozen lines of source code, and I generally recommend treating them the same if they aren't legible: poke it with a REPL (in this case, try to declare a variable or new type that should work if your understanding of the types are correct) and see what the tools say.

(And, of course, as with other source code, illegibility implies more documentation needed. For type systems in particular, I think people tend to under-declare their types [i.e. they'll do "Record<KeyType, Array<{name: string, address: string}>" instead of "Record<KeyType, EmployeeRecords>"], which gives the compiler fewer hooks to shortcut talking about a complex type).

There is one thing consistently true about type systems that frustrates me: I write in procedural code all day, but basically all type systems are functional code. It is frustrating to have to spin my reasoning around to attack a problem in a different language structure when I've been doing straight-line statement-by-statement all day. I don't have a solution to that, but I observe the challenge.

[troupo]

> A dozen lines of nested types are like a dozen lines of source code, and I generally recommend treating them the same if they aren't legible: poke it with a REPL (in this case, try to declare a variable or new type that should work if your understanding of the types are correct) and see what the tools say.

None of these actions make types documentation. The necessity to do this makes them a hindrance at best.

> I think people tend to under-declare their types [i.e. they'll do "Record<KeyType, Array<{name: string, address: string}>" instead of "Record<KeyType, EmployeeRecords>"

Oh god, so true :)

[shadowgovt]

> None of these actions make types documentation.

By the same argument, code isn't documentation. And yet it is; all manner of style guides will tell us "Document the non-obvious, but let the code speak for itself when it's obvious." The challenge, of course, is obviousness is subjective. And I've definitely encountered type stacks where the author thought they were being perfectly clear and the reader didn't. But that makes it no different from other forms of docs.

I think the truth is types (and code) are a little of both documentation and implementation. After all, if code alone were sufficient, we'd just be hand-rolling 1 and 0 patterns to tickle the CPU directly; the existence of programming languages themselves are to bridge the gap between the minimum information a computer needs and human comprehension of what we're trying to get the computer to do.

(Whether types are docs at all, let me put it this way: every modern style guide I've found for languages where strong static typing isn't available declares I have to put the types in the documentation, especially for function calls and the like. That seems to heavily imply that types are a form of auto-checked documentation).

[troupo]

> By the same argument, code isn't documentation.

It isn't.

> all manner of style guides will tell us

A lie parroted ad infinitum doesn't make it truth.

[amw-zero]

Documentation: "is any communicable material that is used to describe, explain or instruct regarding some attributes of an object, system or procedure, such as its parts, assembly, installation, maintenance and use."

That's a pretty [good definition I think](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentation). I also think a type does provide explanation and instructions about how to use typed code. So, I think by definition, types are undeniably documentation.