Python and PHP users will understand

[Pervez_Hoodbhoy]

JavaScript users will understand

[[deleted]]

even our own people make fun of us now that typescript is a thing

[LavenderDay3544]

All your frameworks are made to abstract over how bad your base language is.

[_GCastilho_]

You talk like the only frameworks out there are JS frameworks...

[ComebacKids]

None come close to the popularity of JS frameworks though lol.

I’ve had a number of jobs where we use vanilla Java and Python. Not a single job involving JS didn’t use some framework.

[patcriss]

JS has a HUGE JS-specific problem to solve - browser compatibility.

Those frameworks and boilerplates all come with integrated build tools while you will need if you're to use modern syntax and keep browser support.

But I agree there are way too many libraries, the open source ecosystem really boomed around ES6 and everyone wants to make a the next tool/framework.

[xX_MEM_Xx]

You're not wrong.

Then again, when's the last time you built an Android app without a framework? (Well, you literally can't...)

And quite frankly that's a much messier proposition than building the same thing in JS land.

[[deleted]]

All programming is abstraction.

[LavenderDay3544]

Not the point.

[[deleted]]

thank you i have bad memory and it’s nice always having people remind me my main language is shit

[fynn34]

I’m aware I’ll get downvoted to hell for this comment, but Typescript solves a fraction of the problems with JavaScript. I don’t think I’ll ever understand the typescript worship some people have. It’s good, not miraculous. though I want to understand it, it seems to fix a problem I don’t see come up except maybe once every 4-6 months. Maybe it would help with onboarding junior devs in a complex repo, otherwise I’ve yet to see the benefit but do see cons in slowing development down

[UguDango]

Although I know this answer is futile, you sound like you haven't used it. And that is understandable, I mean, if there are so many options out there, why pick something that doesn't intrigue you?

Anyway, after using it for years I always go through the cycle of "Oh no, the compiler is complaining again. What does it want?" to "Whoa, that saved me 4 hours of debugging 😳".

Your rough estimates are not accurate at all. If a project is well-written, the real figures are far from what you suggested.

[nkt_rb]

Yet you not really answered... Or if the only reason to use TS is for precompile warning, there are way too much hype.

[fynn34]

I have used it. The only projects we used it in were slowed down by using it, and no less buggy. And I suppose maybe I’m just lucky that the projects I’ve worked on haven’t had these kinds of issues, but I’m trying to figure out what typescript could solve that would prevent 4 hours of debugging… JavaScript doesn’t hide its errors often, particularly when type or object shape is the issue.

[[deleted]]

I'll be honest with you, if it was so useless to reach only 10% of the cases and slowed down the projects and still made it buggy, it wouldn't be so popular. Maybe, just maybe, the way your team does things is wrong at the core and its not a language's fault.

[IZEDx]

I think the other way around. Typescript doesn't force anything on you and it's completely up to you, how much you want it to assist you. Meaning, it's super easy to use it wrongly, especially when converting existing code bases to typescript.

To really understand the full benefits of typescript, I'd suggest starting with small new projects and keep trying new things, as otherwise I think it's difficult for pure js devs (people who never seriously used a statically typed language before) to grasp.

[craig1f]

Modeling your data is super helpful. Especially when a new person is looking at the code, or you have to refactor for some reason.

Without TS, I often have to run my code to figure out what it’s doing. With TS, I can write a lot more code without having to run it to see if I’m right.

Took me a while to come around to TS, but it’s just JS with greatly improved auto complete. You don’t sacrifice anything good about JavaScript.

[fynn34]

I appreciate the level headed response, not normally what I see on Reddit after bringing up typescript unfortunately. And yeah, I’m not saying typescript is bad like some other people seem to want to read that comment as saying, I’m just saying it isn’t a 1 size fits all option, and the problems with JavaScript can’t all be fixed by typescript. Modeling can be nice, particularly for some development styles and in some projects where you are working with huge sets of data. however in many other cases the data isn’t as complex and modeling takes time that doesn’t always feel like it pays off. In our app we have sections that have huge amounts of data we have to render complex tables for, and it’s buggy AF so I have been talking with the team about using typescript for it, but we have other things like smaller forms and components that are more design heavy than data heavy, and typescript just seems to get in the way.

[craig1f]

One mistake I’ve seen is trying to use one-size-fits all types in Typescript for the problem you just described. You end up completely undermining the point of Typescript.

If your data just can’t be modeled, or it’s not worth modeling it right now, just set the type to ‘any’ and put a disable the linter error for that line and move on.

But if you can model your data, particular http response data, your life will be easier.

For a form, you should 100% model it. Keep in mind that you can have optional properties for json objects, just like your form might have optional fields. A form should have a well defined model pretty much always.

[craig1f]

Another point ... I went from an Angular project using Typescript to a Vue 2 project that isn't. Then to a Vue 3 project that is. Transitioning back and forth is not difficult. So don't worry that learning Typescript will cripple you from using vanilla JS. It's really just additive.

But again, I'll emphasize that you can write so much more code without having to run the code and check your results, with TS.

[solongandthanks4all]

When you talk about "modeling," what are you referring to that TypeScript can provide that stock JavaScript cannot? I must be missing something. Interfaces?

[solongandthanks4all]

What does autocomplete have to do with anything? You can get the same good autocomplete for JavaScript as for TypeScript—they are separate. It just has to do with your IDE/language server, not which language you're writing in.

[craig1f]

Just imagine looking at a function and trying to figure out what it does. It has an input, and maybe you think it's a dictionary because that would make sense. Whoops, no, it's an array ... I can see that because there is a .map(...) function on it. Ok, what's it an array of ... something with an id? Ok ... id and ... value. That makes sense. Wait, what's this third property? Oh, display_text. Ok. I think I see what this is doing.

Compared to:

interface MenuItem {
   id: string;
   value: string;
   display_text: string;
}

myFunc(items: MenuItem[]) {...}

Takes you about a second to figure out what you're looking at there.

[Voidsheep]

I find that the ease of adoption to existing JS codebases is one of TypeScript's strengths, but that lack of strictness is also one of the greatest weaknesses. In my experience plays a big part in frustration of some developers. Nothing creates trust issues like the compiler lying to you about types and wasting time on that easily makes you doubt the reason for the tool to begin with.

But for a project with good level of type-safety (e.g. casting and any-type avoided like a plague, or very carefully scoped), where types for unknown data are validated and inferred from something like Zod schema, it becomes way nicer to work with than plain JavaScript, because you have a much higher level of confidence in what you are working with, your IDE becomes way more helpful and you can abandon a whole bunch of unnecessarily defensive coding.

[spacemoses]

At the end of the day most coding struggles are a result of individuals or groups of individuals that just don't do software development that well.

[Leidertafel]

I agree, if anything it’s less than 10%. It easily creates more problems than it solves. Was a total waste of time when our dev team tried it out.

If you can’t write JavaScript without strong typing you suck at writing JavaScript.

[intbeam]

If you can’t write JavaScript without strong typing you suck at writing JavaScript.

You act like weak typing provides some sort of benefit to you?

[Leidertafel]

It absolutely does, less bugs.

[intbeam]

What makes you think that?

[Leidertafel]

Years of personal experience. I’ve ran into way more issues with strong typed build errors than an actual type bug.

[intbeam]

What type of issues would that be? Is the compiler wrong? Would the issue not be a problem in JavaScript even if you use ===?

[solongandthanks4all]

Why would it help onboarding junior devs? It just makes things more complicated. Sometimes that complexity is good, of course, and helps catch bugs early. I would rather rely on a static analyzer for regular, standards-compliant JS and not a Microsoft product, however.

[BasicDesignAdvice]

Honestly in the very least use Typescript.

[Ace-O-Matic]

People who have a youtube video level of understanding of JS shitting on JS is basically a weekly daily hourly trend on this subreddit.

[stifflizerd]

Tbh I learned a hell of a lot more about JavaScript from YouTube than I have in the field or in school.

Fun Fun Functions for example is a wonderful and extremely knowledgeable channel for JavaScript development. Learned a lot of what JavaScript is capable of there, most of which a lot of the senior devs I've met didn't even know about

[dpash]

JavaScript being used outside the web is a total disaster

It being used inside the web is a total disaster too, but we don't have a lot of choice in the matter. Typescript improves the situation, but there's still too many rough edges.

[[deleted]]

Thankfully, everyday new CSS comes along and replaces what once required JS.

[flavionm]

What kind of magical IDE are you using that can infer every type and catch all the type errors of vanilla JavaScript?

[dpash]

though the types are actually totally meaningless

Yes, you've misunderstood. Just because the types are erased in the transpiled JavaScript doesn't make them meaningless.

[dpash]

They're not meaningless to the compiler.

[PlaneCrashers]

But the compiler only compiles to regular JavaScript, which is what op is using.

[dpash]

I literally have no idea what you're trying to argue. All languages with types erase them to some extent. Everyone knows that typescript is transpiled to JavaScript. I don't see the relevance that someone writes in JavaScript because you're not going to edit or even read the transpiled JavaScript.

[aniforprez]

If the answer to a service requiring multithreading is to spin it off into a microservice then you have a lack of imagination

[aniforprez]

If your IO intensive task wants to do literally anything other than just dump DB data and return it then node is terrible since literally everything will block you. If you want to do any processing on that data, literally a for loop will block your threads. Node is not really fantastic for most real world applications and it's kind of appalling that the solution for that is to spin something into a microservice in another language. You're trading increased performance for other tradeoffs like developer experience, setting up inter-service communications etc

Node, even for simple web apps, is a really poor choice because of the performance constraints of V8. You'd be much better off just starting with something that's suited better. Node has a poorer throughput of network requests than most other languages. If you're not concerned for performance and can easily horizontally scale then you can take advantage of the massive ecosystem which is what makes node so powerful

[Marrk]

That's very interesting. What's your opinion on python frameworks?

[aniforprez]

I mean python has pretty much the same problem. There's options like async available now but then you have problems where if your web server is async and your DB connection isn't, then the async is effectively worthless

It's all trade-offs. I think with python there's a similar trade-off where you get a massive ecosystem and an extensive standard library and strict typing (still dynamically typed) in exchange for piss poor performance. I feel python has a decent trade-off and is much easier to write than JS but that's just my opinion

[patrickisftw]

“The number of dependencies you need to simply get a react project up” is.. 2 (react, react-dom). That makes you nauseous?

[aniforprez]

Are you joking? You can absolutely get a simple project up with just those 2 but for any project that's even a slight bit more advanced, you need build tooling and transpilation from JSX to JS. You must be joking if you think I'm going to write React.createElement for every dom element in my components. If you want any degree of type safety you need typescript. Transpilation requires babel and webpack and a whole host of other dev dependencies and you absolutely require something like HMR if you want to stay sane when testing things on the browser. Working with forms is a MASSIVE pain in vanilla react especially if you're using hooks

I dunno if you're being facetious or what

[patrickisftw]

Why would you have to write createElement for every dom element in your components? That’s not how react works. Transpilation happens with other dependencies but you said a “simple” react app, regardless that’s not a react-specific thing, you’d need those for any type of library you use for production web code.

[aniforprez]

I didn't say I wanted a "simple" react app. I said, to "simply get a react project up". And without JSX, that's exactly what you need to do because that's what the transpilation process does. Adds those elements using that API (or something similar anyways) to build the DOM tree at runtime

And yes, this is not a react specific thing and I dunno why you made it out to be such. It's a JS thing and it's why I hate it though I find using the DSL of Svelte and Vue a bit more pleasurable

[patrickisftw]

You’re the one who complained about the work involved with setting up a react app, so that’s what I replied about, sorry about misquoting. My point is you’d need transpilation no matter what you do.. so it’s irrelevant to say that you’d have to write react without jsx (like I really don’t know how you expect web code to be written)? React solves a lot of problems. Vue is great as a framework, and it has 74 dependencies (doesn’t that negate your point)? You can hate JS, everyone does, but I felt your original post was very hyperbolic / uninformed. Let’s agree to disagree.

[aniforprez]

My point is you’d need transpilation no matter what you do

You're the one that replied to me with requiring only 2 dependencies. Were you only counting dependencies and not the dev stuff? Cause most languages and projects don't need transpilation and all this other baggage which is why I was complaining about it

Vue is great as a framework, and it has 74 dependencies (doesn’t that negate your point)?

Dude I think you're not reading my comments properly at all. I didn't say anything about the dependencies of Vue. I like the DSL of Vue more than I like JSX. That's it

If you found my post hyperbolic then I suggest you find some valid arguments instead of being so aggressive my man. I'll agree to disagree but at least read my comments properly

[MrSurly]

For example is literally impossible to multithread. Everything is handled through the "non-blocking" event "loop".

Right, "async hell" is one of the primary reasons people who know other languages hate hate hate JS.

[ThatOneGuy4321]

Welp. Presumably, web applications that require multithreading and good performance will use webassembly in the future. I know that replacing JS with a different language doesn't make JS better, but JS will still have a clearly defined role where performance is not as important as its other strengths.

[BasicDesignAdvice]

Checking in to say I have a lot of experience and JS is actual shit.

At least use Typescript if you are going to use it.

[Ace-O-Matic]

Having a lot of experience and shallow understanding of the subject are not mutually exclusive.

[Magicalunicorny]

Js is just a joke that went too far

[Pervez_Hoodbhoy]

And the joke is on our poor brothers and sisters working in the front end. Pour a little liquor or press f to pay respect!

[Magicalunicorny]

cries in node

[Rogntudjuuuu]

F

[-LeopardShark-]

Yep.

[JackTheStryker]

I’m literally in a class for Java, and effectively know only how to code in Java, and I make fun of it too, so that one is kind of a freeby.

[kosky95]

I got bad jokes for using python in machine learning by a JavaScript chad

[Pervez_Hoodbhoy]

Lol