I started using TypeScript when a node project of mine started to get unwieldy. It was probably less than 10,000 lines of JS code, but as requirements kept changing, the design also had to change. Major refactors were very common, and they always broke stuff because it was very difficult to keep track of everything.

TypeScript made that project so much more manageable. I use it for any project with more than 1 code file now. It doesn't prevent all runtime errors (or even all type errors), but it still prevents a ton of them. Also, the type inference is excellent and continually improving.

I don't understand why people say they're fighting the compiler so much. The types are optional! You can always just use "any" if it gets to be overkill.

Some of the complaints listed above are - as far as I can see - very much about strictly typed languages generally.

Coming to JavaScript from strictly typed languages was liberating.... a breath of fresh air. It's like coding without the straitjacket. People should learn to work with JS as it is, instead of constantly fighting against it. TypeScript just seems like a crutch for devs not prepared to change their mindset and work in a different way.

And yes, I have used JS on large projects... and I do actually use the TS language server with the LSP plugin in SublimeText as it is faster than other language servers I've found for JS. However, I don't use any of the TS language features

Tbh, I don't mind either of them. I started with JS and will always use it for my personal projects, but TS has its benefits on shared codebases. Or when I come back to a project later on.

Yeah, sure, types do create overhead and ARE tedious to write.

With every con, in my opinion, there's something to be gained though.

Types in TS (or JS with JSDoc):

• make my code verbose, but prevent me from reading through several layers of code abstraction
• make by IDE argue every other time, thereby forcing me to think my functions and classes through
• take time to write, but drastically reduce time I spend in the debugger

For team projects, there's another benefit to be gained:

Your stuff doesn't suddenly crash when another dev fiddled around or updated a NPM module with a breaking change (yes, that actually happens)

I think experts call this 'Robust Code'. I just wouldn't want to spend an hour cursing at my debugging-terminal if it can be prevented by 15 minutes of typing my module.

I was a huge TS naysayer; I agreed with every single one of those bullet points. Now, I find going back to JS projects very difficult.

I think the big problem with TS is some people take it too far. Yes, it definitely can be harder to read if you use inline types, types that are named the same as your classes or you feel the need to annotate absolutely everything instead of rely on type inference where it makes sense. Things like generics can also be super confusing to new TS devs and oftentimes, they are unneeded.

If you write TS sensibly, it can be a HUGE boost to your productivity because all of the code is nicely documented by the types themselves. If makes onboarding devs 10,000x easier, as long as they understand TS decently. I don't feel like I make many type errors that TS catches and, in some cases, I find it annoying when I have to deal with things the compiler says is a problem, but simply isn't... But I recently had to go back and update a project I built years ago in Vue with plain JS and I found it a complete nightmare to figure out what half the logic was doing because there were no annotations and the inference of the IDE just threw "any" types all around.

Even on the smallest projects, I use TS now and don't really think there's a single instance I'd consider writing regular JS unless it was just a plain HTML/CSS/JS project that adding a compile step would be overkill for.

Wow, I thought I was the only one not enjoying the experience of Typescript. I started developing a product in React 5 months ago. Back then typescript really felt like the right thing for a newbie because it helped me avoid tons of minor errors. But overtime as I became better at JS as a whole, i started getting frustrated with typing definitions of every variable and eventually (in order to meet my delivery date) I even started completely skipping type checks by filling in "any" as the type.

Soon after I started to wonder what is the point of typescript if I'm barely even using it at this point. I thought I was just following bad programming practices. But after reading this post & comments I'm convinced typescript is not at all a necessity for every damn project.

Its a small minority of coding cowboys, usually former backend devs who switched to javascript at some point. You can tell usually by the comparison with Java. Type defs used to be a problem but not since 2020, all maintained libs on npm either have built-in type defs or they're available through @types. Often these coding cowboys are very passionate about some unmaintained lib that hasnt been updated for 9 years and is full of security exploits. Typescript is a superset of JavaScript, so people complaining how the syntax of JavaScript is better than Typescript, you can just immediately ignore 😛

I don't know if it's an issue with ts or tooling or what, but 9 times out 10 when there is an error it is super difficult to understand what type is expected and/or how you have failed to satisfy it. There is often so many layers of inheritance, extension or composition that knowing what you need to provide can eat away your day. And sanity. Even when it is a simple type and a simple violation the error message is super verbose.
After about 9 months if full time ts dev, I can get around just fine and can decode errors pretty well, but it wasn't easy and definitely wasn't pretty.
My other major complaint is that while you get all the verbosity of a strongly typed language, you get none of the good parts. E.g. introspection/reflection, metadata about the types you are using. Instead of helping me to write intelligent tools, I find it prevents me from writing reusable code by requiring use of generics, which in c# I found to be one of the greatest assets, but in ts I find to be a black hole.

import { OldComponent as _OldComponent } from 'components';
const OldComponent: any = _OldComponent;

I won't lie, there are things I really like with TS, but I wish I could spend less time making the compiler happy.

If someone wants to make a sound type system for ES6+, I'm all-in for it… 😂

Ahh I remember this Twitter thread. I laughed so hard at the Bubble Sort type 🤣 Part of me was like... WHY... and part of me was like holy sh1t that is ... impressive - I did not know this was possible in TypeScript.

We've rewritten a large code base to JavaScript + JSDoc from TypeScript:
SPA, frontend, Vue.js v2 + TS ➡️ Svelte + JS + JSDoc: half size of "runtime" JS and source code, three time faster build

• smaller source code
• readable code
• increased maintainability
• booting new developers is faster
• more developers available, because you don't need to know TS
• fewer dependencies: less breaking change, less vulnerability
• less tooling

youtu.be/xLDVfBUgD8U