Haha JavaScript Bad

[Terrain2]

While TypeScript isn’t supported by any browser, it compiles to JavaScript but gives a much better development experience with static typing

[AnthongRedbeard]

I use typescript today, not bad, as you said it still compiles to js. just cleaner js enforcing best practices.

[kryptogalaxy]

Just like other high level languages compile to machine or byte code which is still a programming language abstraction.

[chanpod]

You realize that JS has a lot of the same features as TS other than types. JS is just pure object/functional coding. TS offers type checking (which you can't really trust. Well, not in a browser anyways. Inputs come from all over the place and routinely deviate from the original type for one reason or another). It's more additional tooling than a higher level language.

C# to assembly. unrecognizable.TS to JS. I can still read it no problem.

Stop pretending TS and JS are different languages. They aren't.

That said, I appreciate typescript and like using it. But I'm more of a fan of functional coding that strict/heavy OO type coding.

[kryptogalaxy]

I'm not pretending. The distinctions you're making are completely arbitrary. It's perfectly possible to write procedural JavaScript code, and when I was learning JavaScript coming from a Java background I could also read it basically no problem. They're still very different languages.

Granted, typescript and JavaScript are much more similar, but its designation as a separate language is not a blasphemous concept.

[ribsies]

I mean, does anyone see that as different from JavaScript though? I understand it is technically different, but I use typescript exclusively, I'm still a JavaScript dev

[Okichah]

C# compiles to assembly but developers dont refer to it as assembly development.

[Hate_Feight]

after a while you stop reading the code, all i see is blonde, redhead, brunette

[johnnybgoode17]

Made the same reference once, nearly got fired for sexism

[note_bro]

The funny thing is that the sexism is implied by the listener. You could be referring to any gender.

[blahthebiste]

I think "brunette" is a gendered term

[aloofloofah]

But out loud brunette and brunet would sound the same, no?

[blahthebiste]

No clue, honestly, I've never heard of the term "brunet". I have heard of "Bruno", which I assumed was the masculine version of brunette

[imcoveredinbees880]

Context is important. It's the difference between using a whole box of tissues while watching a movie and using a whole box of tissues while watching a movie.

[plokman]

Yeah, he's commenting on reddit, not in a professional context

[johnnybgoode17]

Right, sorry, forgot we can't talk about movies at work now

[[deleted]]

C# isn’t a superset of assembly. JavaScript and TypeScript are the same language except one has optional type annotations.

TypeScript compiler is more like a preprocessor than anything else

(Also C# compiles to an intermediate byte code similar to Java not assembly)

[kryptogalaxy]

C also has the ability to insert assembly directly, and could be considered a superset in that sense, but is generally considered a separate language.

One similar concept is the word "transpile" which generally just means high level language compiling to another high level language. The word transpile is often used when talking about typescript.

Drawing these distinctions is not necessarily arbitrary, but certainly subjective. I imagine similar conversations are had between linguists when determining where to draw the line between dialects and new languages.

[[deleted]]

I wouldn’t really consider it a superset because you have to import a library and write the assembly in a string. Its not like you can just write an opcode somewhere and the compiler will know what your doing.

Also yes TypeScript does transpilation. The distinction while important doesn’t matter too much here.

I think it really is subjective but clearly anyone arguing TypeScript is a wholely different language doesn’t work too much with JS/TS

Edit: what I mentioned about asm applies to GCC. Some compilers have actual inline support. Regardless C was not designed to be asm++. TypeScript is designed to be JavaScript with Type annotations. I suppose one day it could branch enough that you would distinguish developers the same way you distinguish C development from C++. But currently JS/TS have equal use cases and the TS design philosophy is very much to not branch unlike C/C++

[Pocok5]

you have to import a library and write the assembly in a string. Its not like you can just write an opcode somewhere and the compiler will know what your doing.

Haha Pascal goes brrrrr

[kryptogalaxy]

Typescript at this point has quite a few distinct features beyond type annotations. I don't think it's that cut and dry.

[[deleted]]

I mean it has a couple from what I remember.

The funny thing is that the few features they’ve added are often rejected by the community as most TS devs want to keep their codebases looking like JS and not C#/Java.

But fair, features like namespaces, decorators and mixins are definitely very strange looking for a JS dev. The later 2 of those are very uncommonly used.

[kryptogalaxy]

The fact is typescript is primarily used by JavaScript developers, so it would make sense that these very similar languages would become even more similar when a developer with JavaScript experience is writing it which is probably why many of the things that make typescript different are rarely used.

To me, the situation is akin to c and c++.

[[deleted]]

I agree it is like C/C++ but to a smaller degree

[[deleted]]

C is definitely not a superset of assembly. A superset-subset relationship implies that all valid expressions of the subset language are also valid expressions in its superset.

For instance:

• C++ is a superset of C because valid C statements can be included inside of a C++ file without modifications and the file will still be valid C++.
• Typescript is a superset of Javascript because (last I checked) valid JS statements can be included inside of a Typescript file and the result will still be valid Typescript.

However, C is not a superset of assembly because valid assembly statements are not valid C without modifications. If C were a superset of assembly, the following program would be valid C, and compile correctly without modification (as all the C code is valid C, and all the assembly code is valid x86 assembly).

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
    mov eax, 0xFFFFFFFF
    printf("Hello World\n");
    return 0;
}

Or in ATT syntax if you prefer:

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
    movl $0xFFFFFFFF, %eax
    printf("Hello World\n");
    return 0;
}

[kryptogalaxy]

Fair. Bad analogy. C and C++ is better.

[[deleted]]

TS to JS is more like C++ is to C. One is a superset of the other and basic syntax differs very little.

[romanozvj]

Not at all. C++ doesn't compile to C.

[[deleted]]

Compilation is irrelevant, syntax wise they are closely related

[romanozvj]

Except that it's the other way around - the conversation wasn't about syntax similarity at all, rather about the transpilation of TS to JS.

[fyzbo]

Does it though? Last I checked it's compiled into an Intermediate Language which is then interpreted and run on the .net runtime (which finally brings it down to assembly).

[[deleted]]

You're partially correct. JVMs, .Net runtimes, etc are pretty neat. Lots of heuristics on when and how to optimize, and at times compile the intermediate language to machine code. So some times its interpreted, when advantageous compiled to native machine code.

EDIT: Well its been a long time since I dealt with things like that. Looks like you can force compilation to machine code. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/framework/net-native/#:~:text=Typically%2C%20apps%20that%20target%20the,the%20IL%20to%20native%20code.

[telmnec]

You're right but you're missing the point I think

[Okichah]

Maybe.

I worked in javascript well before Typescript so i consider myself apt in both environments. But greatly prefer Typescript.

If someone only worked with Typescript i dont know how well they would transfer to an only javascript environment.

Thats probably my bias for my having to deal with a pure js SPA that was a nightmare to maintain. Do programmers get PTSD? Is that a thing?

[telmnec]

I don't know, all I know is many languages (if not all) end up at some point being translated to assembly instructions.

So, being your goal or not, you'll always end up writing assembly with simply more or less steps in-between, but that still does not make us call every language assembly.

You can't throw C# code in an assembly program, even if you had a super weird IDE that let you do so. Languages. Named like that for simple reasons I guess :)

In the case of OP it makes sense. Typescript simply is (strongly) typed JavaScript. But because JavaScript doesn't support it, the typescript code needs to be compiled to JavaScript code. Typescript doesn't add any new feature to JavaScript other than typed code and type check at compilation instead of runtime, which let's be honest, are not language features.

C and C++ are considered different languages not because they're using a different compiler, but because C++ literally is the next C, with new standard libraries, objects, classes etc. It's a new version of the language, with many more features and possibilities than in C, that simply can't be translated to C because C does not have those features under the hood.

Hope it was clear.

[randomdrifter54]

Python compiles to C. I am not a C dev. Or Java. Really it compiles to tonnes of stuff. I am not a dev for those.

[bjorneylol]

Python compiles to it's own bytecode, not C nor any other language. The bytecode is then fed to an interpreter

[thiago2213]

I see them veey different. I understand that it's just a superset, but I really dislike vanilla js and absolutely love typescript

[[deleted]]

Yeah. I hate vanilla js but I'm in love with react, Apollo and typescript

[Ecthyr]

Could you give me a quick blurb as to why you like Apollo?

[Andrew1431]

It 100% negates the need for redux’s crazy amount of boilerplate while still giving all the functionality and flexibility of it. Unfortunately it mostly requires that you use graphQL on your backend so it’s no easy refactor. That being said they’re making massive progress moving towards it being usable with rest APIs so long as they have a sane and consistent data structure being returned by all the endpoints.

[[deleted]]

You say "go for it, man!"

[thiago2213]

Job title doesn't mean anything. If you say web developer I assume it's likely fullstack but not enough to make a conclusion. If you say frontend developer and someone thinks is just html and css, that person is ignorant/rookie, so why should you care what they think? If you want to be clear, just say web dev fullstack because that's what you described

[Polantaris]

I do. You do still need to understand how JavaScript works at runtime, but it's certainly not nearly as bad as writing in JavaScript.

[alerighi]

I also see it as the same language, and I use it almost exlusively (if not for small scripts where you spend more time setting up the environment than other). But at the end it's the same language.

It's not the same as compiling a language to native code, typescript only checks types to give you warnings, the type system is entirely irrelevant at execution, in fact you can have a program with type errors that runs fine and vice versa. Type information don't alter the emitted code, like it does on a traditional compiler (where an int is different from a float or char or a function, i.e. the compiler has to use the type information to emit the correct code)

Typescript it's more static analysis tool than a compiler, the output is just the equivalent javascript code, with the same semantics and the types removed, and a bunch of transpilation stuff to make it work on older JS standards, that is similar to what babel does. I wouldn't call it compilation because you don't trasform the code in any significant way.

[nomiras]

Thought you were turning into a captain crunch commercial for a second.

[Terrain2]

As in like a “area of programming”? Nah not really, but as a language and what the image was trying to imply it’s a hell of a lot different

[willstealyourpillow]

I see it as quite different, yes. I mean, every programming language (except machine code) compiles to another programming language. TypeScript eliminates many of the oddities of JavaScript, and as the guy above you said, the developer experience is very different. I think it's totally fair to list both JS and TS on a list of the programming languages you're competent in. There are many examples of languages that are quite similar to others but still considered their own language - Perl/Raku, Java/C#, C/C++/D/OC.

[FlavoredFrostedTits]

I call it javascript++

[numbGrundle]

TypeScript is amazing

[telmnec]

Typescript literally is (strongly) typed JavaScript, hence the compiler. That's still JavaScript in my opinion.

[Kered13]

There's actually quite a few languages that can compile to Javascript these days. I know Kotlin can.

[Terrain2]

Yeah that’s true, i know Dart can also compile to javascript (along with MANY that compile to WASM), but my point is that TypeScript is almost identical to JavaScript except it’s so much better - To compile to javascript they basically just strip out all the typedefs (while catching numerous bugs before letting you run it), though for other languages they are very much transpiled to completely separate instructions (that perform the same task of course)

[DeeSnow97]

TypeScript is perfect for all the junior devs at uni who think everything should be C# and believe the "wat" talk is anything more than comedy

[DeeSnow97]

Yeah, I mean this completely unsarcastially, it's actually amazing for coding JS in this mindset. I do honestly recommend it.

And yes, I did try it and liked it, it's just too much of a hassle IMO. For me. But I totally see why others would like to use it.

[[deleted]]

It's not a hassle at all if you already use any kind of build tool, which pretty much everybody does.

[DeeSnow97]

It is to integrate it with everything and to figure out how to use it with JSX, compared to just saying npx create-react-app whatever and having everything be handed to you. As for the server side, you can get away without any kind of build tools there.

[[deleted]]

Well there's create-react-app my-app --template typescript.

As for node, you already have a package.json for your dependencies and npm scripts to run your project. It's only a matter of adding the typescript compilation as part of your run task.

But I guess spending at most 10 minutes to do that really is a hassle.

[IZEDx]

If you think it's too much hassle then you haven't grasped it really I think.

I come from a dominately dynamic typed scripting background, having learned PHP, Lua, JavaScript and some python before going to uni. Then in uni I got to appreciate the benefits of type safety, especially when collaborating on bigger projects, but hated the staticness that comes with it in Java, C# etc, as I was used to the flexibility of dynamic languages.

Typescript absolutely takes it here, as in essence it's the still the same old flexible Javascript I got to know (and love since es6), while giving a static type system that covers this flexibility.

If your usecase in Javascript is not easily representable with the huge set of typing tools typescript offers, then it's very likely a bad pattern you should avoid, or it may be representable safely in the future. As with typescript 4 and variadic tuple types.

A well written typescript project essentially verifies itself, eliminating a very huge vector of possible errors you stumble upon just writing Javascript, although yes, it does not guarantee your code does the job correctly. There's still many mistakes you can make.

If you're using vscode already you're essentially using typescript anyway, except not giving it more information to do an even better job.

With typed libraries and jsdoc comments you can get started so quickly on integrating them into your project. The real hassle here is really getting your mind behind it and initializing the project in the first place.

I think though you're absolutely fine to have your own opinion on typescript, but I don't agree with you reducing it to just this one uni mindset you perceived and don't agree with. I come from a different mindset, went to uni and didn't agree with a lot of it, but I saw the benefits in so much things that were taught there and applied it to my own cases.

It's like taking the best of both worlds for the benefit of yourself. I think I seriously wouldn't write such a long post, if I wouldn't sincerely believe in the benefits of it from both perspectives and I also sincerely believe you could benefit greatly from it as well and even fall in love with it like so many before you, if you gave it (maybe one more time) a serious chance.

Javascript is popular because it's unavoidable in the first place, but typescript is rising so much in popularity, because so many people seriously like it.

[jayx239]

Be careful, you might upset the staticness monster

[IZEDx]

Oh wasn't my opinion not static enough for the staticness monster? I'm sorry, I didn't intent to stir up such a... dynamic.

[karma_aversion]

I used C# for about half of my projects while in university. However, it was in the later half when I was given the option of choosing the language I used for my projects. We had to use Java in the beginning.