this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2023
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I kinda feel your pain. A project that I helped launch is written in Typescript technically, but the actual on-the-ground developers were averse to using type safety, so
anyis used everywhere. So, it becomes worst of both worlds, and the code is a mess (I don't have authority in the project anymore, and wouldn't touch it even if I could).I'm also annoyed at some level because some of the devs are pretty junior, and I fear they are going to go forward thinking Typescript or type safety in general is bad, which hurts my type-safety-loving-soul
In theory I'm a fan of the inferred but static typing systems that most modern languages use (kotlin, rust, TS, etc.) where most local variable types can be inferred and only return types/object fields/parameters need explicit types.
I just despise typescript because it feels more like someone put a bandaid over JavaScript and all of its oddities instead of making a properly fleshed out language, and allowing the option for an 'any' type to be used freely by default emphasizes that.
Based on your description it sounds like you haven't given it a fair shake. I'll take TS over JS any day, at least there is room for improvement. I will say however I personally haven't been unlucky enough to run into projects that abuse the any type. The worst I've run into is a JS library with no typings I have to manually type.
I imagine what they mean is e.g. that TypeScript can tell you something is a
Date, but it doesn't attempt to fix some of the confusing, quirky behaviour with that: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Date#interpretation_of_two-digit_yearsSo, yes, it's generally better than JS, but it doesn't actually make it good/attractive, if you're used to the sanity of backend languages. It very much feels like lipstick on a pig.
Exactly this. I'd rather use TypeScript than regular JS, but I enjoy using almost any other statically-typed language more (except maybe C++) because TS has the potential to be just as bad as JS for codebases where it isn't being used correctly (this is true for other languages as well but it's usually a lot more obvious).
Not that it isn't possible to have good typescript code, but rather that code becomes a lot harder to maintain because of problems that could've been prevented at a language level (truthy/falsey logic, 'any' type being allowed by default rather than 'unknown,' etc)