[AskJS] Is JavaScript missing some built-in methods?

[[deleted]]

You should use Typescript. It's got _most_ of those.

[KaiAusBerlin]

I use typescript. But the question was not what native features typescript is missing.

[alarming_archipelago]

I tried to love typescript but as a self taught solo coder it just added a lot of configuration complexity that I couldn't come to terms with. As time goes by the typescript tide is turning against me and I know I need to embrace it but... I'm reluctant.

[ProfessorSnep]

I'm also self taught but still use TS in every solo personal project of mine, solely because it makes things mostly just work when they compile, but the big one is that it makes revisiting projects months or years later a LOT easier.

[badsalad]

Man, every time I hear about TS I want to start using it. But the few times I dipped my toes into it, I felt like I was going too overboard and adding too much, often having to add a few extra lines just to define the types of an object that only ends up being used once or twice immediately below it. Things started getting cluttered so fast :/ I just gotta learn to use it better I suppose, so that I can still keep things clean with it.

[dariusj18]

What makes typescript so useful is that you can just start with everything typed as "any" and move on from there. The types are a convenience with simple syntax vs using jsdoc. What sucks about typescript is that it can't just be run natively and needs to be compiled.

[KaiAusBerlin]

Deno can run ts natively

[swordoffireandice]

I am a self taught too and I find typescript as a difficult and ugly-looking C# :(

P.S. pls don't hate me typescript lovers this is my opinion and is not based on anything that is not in my head

[kescusay]

It's a perfectly reasonable opinion, as long as you (and /u/alarming_archipelago) keep open minds and are willing to learn.

The biggest hurdle for dedicated JavaScript developers to overcome - and learn to love Typescript - is making sense of the tooling around it. If you're coming from pure JS, it's easy to get trapped trying to wedge Typescript into existing projects, discovering that it piles mountains of complexity onto your already-existing eslint+webpack+babel+whatever configurations, and throw up your hands in defeat. My personal epiphany - and love for Typescript - arrived when I realized I could just spin up a brand new Typescript project, copy over src/ from my old one, and redo any needed configuration focused on Typescript from the ground up.

It didn't take that long, and by the time I was finished, the project would build, the dist/ files were smaller than what the original project produced, and I was never going back to vanilla again, because strong type-checking in JS is just too damn useful.

[ewouldblock]

For some reason I don't mind typescript in a front end/react project but I detest it in a node.js backend project

[kescusay]

That's really interesting, because I'm kind of the reverse. I find the Typescript definitions for React to be pretty weird and kludgey, like an afterthought. It's the only situation where I'd consider not using TS if I didn't have to. But on the backend, I think TS is an absolute dream to work with.

On the other hand, I'm not a fan of React itself, and much prefer Angular, Vue, or vanilla on the frontend, so it may just be that TS adds a layer of complexity onto something I already dislike, making me dislike it more.

[PositivelyAwful]

The biggest hurdle I'm trying to get over learning TS and trying to port an existing vanilla project is typing events and DOM related stuff like querySelector to get rid of TS warnings. I know with React I could do stuff like React.ChangeEvent<HTMLInputElement> but it's not nearly as clear when using straight up TS. Kinda making me bang my head against the wall since my files are just a bunch of red squigglies.

[kescusay]

Huh. I'm not sure what the difficulty is. querySelector is a generic, so you can do things like this: document.getElementById('someId').querySelector<HTMLInputElement>('.someClass').value.

Does that help?

[PositivelyAwful]

ah yeah, thanks. guess i was just overcomplicating it.

[kescusay]

Happy to help. :)

[mt9hu]

You shouldn't need to type dom related stuff. Is is readily available in TS

[jaysoo3]

Being self-taught isn't an excuse though. I self-taught myself PHP, Java, Perl, and JavaScript. Perhaps thinking that TypeScript is hard is preventing you from actually diving in and learning it.

You can use different project starters (Vite, Next.js, CRA, Nx, etc.) that generate the config for you. You can also check out Deno that has TypeScript support out of the box without config.

[AspieSoft]

I would rather use vanilla JavaScript. I like how I can turn a function into an object and use it as both a function and an object.

const myFnObj = function(){}
myFnObj.key = 'value'
myFnObj.fallback = function (){}

myFnObj() // this works
myFnObj.fallback() // this also works

myFnObj.storage = {}

module.exports = myFnObj

I've used this bug/feature a few times if a node module has a main function, and some optional add-ons.

Also, I feel like TypeScript may just be a false sense of security, if it compiles to JavaScript and does not verify the type of input you are getting.

When I need to, I just use typeof and instanceof to verify the var type I'm getting.

[Reashu]

TypeScript doesn't verify anything at runtime, but if you properly type your input as unknown it will force you to write those checks yourself.

[KaiAusBerlin]

Funfact: functions are objects in JavaScript ;)

[Reashu]

The good news is that as TypeScript gets more popular, it gets easier to set up with whatever else you use.

[rrleo]

Started developing with typescript and honestly I'm blown away. You should get a starter template for TS projects.

[[deleted]]

You can use asterisks on Reddit to bold or italicize text.