I was talking to my manager the other day, discussing the languages we are using at $dayjob. He kind of offhandedly said that he thinks TypeScript is a temporary fad and soon everything will go back to using JavaScript. He doesn’t like that it’s made by Microsoft either.
I’m not a frontend developer so I don’t really know, but my general impression is that everything is moving more and more towards TypeScript, not away from it. But maybe I’m wrong?
Does anyone who actually works with TypeScript have any impression about this?
If TypeScript still is a fad at this point, his definition of fad is far lengthier than mine is.
I’m fairly sure TypeScript will remain in popular use longer than whatever project you’re working on 😅
As long as JavaScript is being used, TypeScript will be used. It makes writing JavaScript tolerable.
Imo they’ll add typing to vanilla js, which will kill ts.
And the ts devs support this
And I’m sure Microsoft would be happy to not have to do it anymore. And I personally would much prefer an actual typing system rather than a glorified linter.
Tho I wonder if it will end up being like jQuery, in the sense that, by the time core jQuery features got added to vanilla js, jQuery had developed new features that validated its continued existence. Maybe TS will go further than what gets absorbed into JS and keep it alive.
Honestly, I’ve never used jQuery despite writing JS for over 10 years. Just because I hate the reliance on massive nebulous packages so many have. Especially when I looked into it years ago, so much of what I saw jQuery being used for was stuff that was extremely easy to implement yourself. How has it changed?
jQuery is a lot smaller and less nebulous than its competitors (looking at you,
Reactliterally every JavaScript framework).Jquery was what was popular when i learned js. I’m kinda glad it was, honestly: jQuery is a little unique in that it doesn’t have magic to it the way js frameworks do. Everything you can do in jQuery, you can do in vanilla JavaScript pretty easily. With, say, React, how is a newcomer supposed to understand how a series of React components become HTML?
So jQuery kept it “real” for me. Fewer abstractions between me and the HTML meant it was easier for me to connect the dots as a self taught developer.
As for how it’s changed, it’s more any how vanilla JavaScript has changed. A lot of the things that made jQuery so much easier and cleaner than vanilla are now baked in, like document.querySelector(), element.classList, createElement(), addEventListener()… It had Ajax methods that, before jQuery, were a tremendous pain in the ass.
jQuery was great, but, you basically had to use it with something like PHP, because it had no back end. So when angular came out (and a few others that aren’t around anymore and I’ve forgotten), it allowed you to replace both PHP and jQuery, and developers rejoiced.
Why did they rejoice? I’m not actually sure there was reason to, objectively speaking. As developers, we like new tech, especially if that new tech requires us to think about code differently, even if, in retrospect, it’s a hard argument to make to say that, if we had just stuck with PHP and jQuery we would be somehow worse off than we are with React.
Of course, in tech, when a new system changes how we think, sometimes (not as often as we’d like) it helps us reconsider problems and find much more elegant solutions. So, would we have all the innovations we have today if all these js frameworks has never existed? Obviously we can’t really answer that – but it’s a toke of copium for when we get nostalgic for the PHP/jQuery days.
(Also, for you newer people reading this, you should probably be aware that the PHP/jQuery mini-stack is still very quietly used. You’ll definitely see it, especially in php-baaed COTS.)
Thanks for informing me, but I still kinda wonder why someone would use it today?
And also JS.
Well “kill” is perhaps a strong word but it definitely won’t be JS anymore at that point. The changes required to bake in strong type support would be radical.
That would be a great solution, because while I love Typescript, I hate compiled web code. One of the coolest things about the internet is that as it’s supposed to work, you can download the source code for any website you go to. It’s open source by design. I hate closed source websites and I hate compiled website code that helps close the source it’s quite a contradiction because typescript is awesome and I recognise that compilation is the only way to get it to run on our web infrastructure. So it would be great if we could just type JavaScript and solve the contradiction that way.
Doesn’t typescript compile to js anyways? Is it obfuscated?
It’s not intentionally obfuscated or minified. Generally it just strips out types and comments, but depending on how it’s configured, it will rewrite certain things to work in ES5. At my work our build process uses a separate minification and bundling step, which also serves to a obfuscate our proprietary code.
It transpiles to js and there is some level of stripping for optimization yes.
the can’t add proper typing without adding a compiler. Whatever they add will be closer to puthon’s type hints. I’ve had to write primary in python lately and type hints help very very slightly, and tools like pyright catch so many false errors due to lack of hints in libraries that we’re forced to add ignore statements on too many lines. I genuinely don’t understand how there can be so many languages and all of them be painful to use
I genuinely don’t understand how there can be so many languages and all of them be painful to use
What about kotlin?
yes I heard it’s great. Scala was one language where I didn’t constantly feel like getting hit in the head with a hammer and I’ve heard Kotlin has a similar experience. I’m not interested in Android development so I haven’t tried it
Kotlin isn’t just for Android; IMO unless you’re trying to do purely functional programming, it’s preferable to Scala for JVM work.
Yeah anywhere were you would use Java. Scala has a too high adoption cost. Kotlin is better suited for enterprise, has a stronger ecosystem and better interop with Java. I did enjoy scala though when experimented with it. The only thing I missed was the lack of control flow, no labels, continue, break
I have very minimal pain in Go
I’ve heard good things about it, looking forward to learning it (hopefully soon)
I was able to pick it up extremely quickly. Just basically looking at existing projects. Tbh, I don’t even know how I learned it.
TypeScript might not be here to stay, but typed JavaScript definitely is. I’ve switched to writing 100% TypeScript, and haven’t looked back. The fact that just adding types to one of my (admittedly more complex) libraries surfaced 3 unknown bugs was eye opening to me.
CoffeeScript was a fad, but TypeScript seems to gaining more and more popularity these days, with new runtimes like deno supporting them natively. TypeScript finally gave Microsoft relevancy again in webdev world, so I bet they’ll go a great length to make sure it stays that way. If Microsoft were still making their own browser engine, I bet they’ll make it natively supports TypeScript too.
CoffeeScript was a fad because it didn’t solve anyone’s problems. It was basically “look how cool code you can write”.
TypeScript is gaining popularity because static typing solves real problems. It’s also a superset of JavaScript instead of being a completely new language from scratch, which makes it easier for JavaScript devs to learn.
it felt to me like coffeescript solved problems that people had, then js got equivalent features. arguably that could happen to ts as well
Exactly, it was pretty useful until ~2015 imho. Then JS got better, and coffeescript did not follow these evolutions.
CoffeeScript wasn’t a fad, it just became obsolete because JS adopted the syntax sugar CoffeeScript was selling. In a way, it did its job.
Yup! All of the following features were in CoffeeScript first: Modules, classes, arrow functions, async functions, parameter defaults, …spread, destructuring, template strings.
So I’d say it was extremely successful in making JavaScript better.
So it was Kotlin before Kotlin
Static typing, for the win, and I’ll die on this hill.
A fad? No, definitely not. TypeScript brings features (and structure) that will /should probably make their way into JS.
It’s sort of like asking, “does SASS replace CSS” or “is liquid the next HTML?” They’re just implementations of features FE developers want in the core spec of JS, CSS, and HTML.
that will /should probably make their way into JS.
Not really, IMHO. The main advantage of TS is that it will help you catch errors without having to run a particular piece of code - i.e. you won’t have to move to the third page of some multi-page form to discover a particular bug. In other words, it helps you catch bugs before your code even reaches your browser, so it doesn’t bring you much to have them in the browser.
(There is a proposal to allow running TS in the browser, which would be nice, but you’d still run a type checker separately to actually catch the bugs.)
I think the important part is that the syntax will become standardised, rather than being defined by microsoft/typescript, potentially allowing for alternative implementations. It could also make the build step optional in some cases, which is something people dislike about typescript currently.
I think the syntax explicitly won’t get standardised - but the places where syntax can be put will be (e.g. after a
:following a variable, before the=). With, yes, the goal of eliminating the build step, but the type checker (which really is just a linter at this point) would still be able to define their own specific syntax. I don’t think it could work any other way either, anyway.
Hoping this is true. The biggest annoyance with typescript is needing some kind of compiler. Haven’t used Bun or Deno very much, both of which natively support TS, but there are still incompatibilities with the way Node does things and how certain modules were built (CommonJS vs ESM). I like writing JavaScript but the tooling is utter crap.
5 years ago everything was moving to TypeScript. Now everything has moved. Developers are still catching up, but it will be one-way traffic from here.
I’m guessing your manager thinks TypeScript is like CoffeeScript. It is not like CoffeeScript.
Also, TypeScript is only the beginning. In the halls of the tech giants most devs view TypeScript as a sticking plaster until things can be moved to webassembly. It will be a long time until that makes any dent in JS, but it will also be one-way traffic when it does.
Developers are still catching up, but it will be one-way traffic from here.
Honestly I disagree, maybe I exist in a bit of an echo chamber, but it seems like since around ES2020 or so (some) people have been transitioning from TS to write JS with JSDoc and modern JS style rules.
I’ve basically transitioned to Go for work(where I can), but don’t really mind writing modern JS
Typescript makes writing Javascript a reasonable thing to do. Your manager is a fad.
Your manager is a fad.
If only…
Javascript is a fad, we should all move to WASM. 🙃
But no, TypeScript is not a fad. Unless a better “Typescript like” thing comes out - I know how in frontend land people like to make their own substitute framework that does something slightly different than an existing framework - But I don’t really see why anyone would want to make a NewTypeScript, and not just expand existing TypeScript
When anyone in a professional setting says they don’t like having a mega corp supporting something I lose a bit of respect for their opinion tbh.
Yes we all know mega corps suck.
But if you’re using anything in a professional production environment that is meant to last in the long term this is 100% what you want.
Some of us are old enough to remember the browser wars and EEE, so I definitely understands not wanting to be sucked into some mega corps eco system with future lock-ins. Often you can’t do anyhhing else, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck.
Same. Writing sites that relied on IE was always a stupid decision and kinda invalidated the point of writing a web app.
I think most people knew that and the managers fucked up big time pushing it. At least in my experience.
But that’s very different to choosing a programming language.
I mean it is fair to say sometimes it depends on the mega corp, if the whole thing relies on one corp if they’re funding dries up then the whole project dies. But I also don’t really think typescript would die without Microsoft now
No, because raw-dogging JavaScript isn’t something grown-up software shops do.
[Object object] would like a word
Can’t they just use JSDoc?
No. Dynamic typing, though, is absolutely a fad.
Dynamic typing is not a fad.
Python is older than Java, older than me. It is still going strong.
Python also has a statically typed option these days.
Edit: Previously said “strongly” instead of “statically”
Which one? There is static typing with the
typingmodule, but that’s not strong.I should have said statically typed, fixed.
Ah, gotcha, thanks! I’d have loved a strongly-typed option.
The static typing system is slowly getting there, but many useful Python patterns can’t be expressed yet. You can, for example, write a function that appends an item to a generic tuple - but you can’t concatenate two tuples. I really hope they keep expanding on the system!
Isn’t Python already strongly typed?
No:
$ python Python 3.10.13 (main, Jan 28 2024, 03:02:00) [GCC 13.2.1 20230918 (Red Hat 13.2.1-3)] on linux Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> def handle_foo(value: list[int]) -> bool: ... return 42 ... >>> print(handle_foo(False)) 42
This just blew my mind. I had always assumed Java was older. I started writing hobby projects in Java in the 90s. I don’t think I heard about Python until the early 2000s.
“Strong”… how many actual projects run on python?
Half of the internet ( backend) runs on java, banking, your government systems, etc.
It’s not a fad, it’s just unusable for anything other than research project and small time scripting, which to be fair, it’s what it’s designed for.
You have no idea. Python (and Ruby) are used widely in the industry. Large parts of YouTube are written in Python, and large parts of GitHub are written in Ruby. And every major tech company is using Python in their offline data pipelines.
I know of systems critical to the modern web that are written in Python.
With how shit youtube is I am not sure you made a great case for python mate.
And every major tech company is using Python in their offline data pipelines
Thats a meaningless statement, ETL tools can execute python as part of a multi step process and then yeah they use python in their data pipeline, but the ETL tool that orchestrates it is which is the actual value add software is not written in Python it’s written in Java, I know this for a fact…
With how shit youtube is I am not sure you made a great case for python mate.
I’m not good with names about logical fallacies but that sure is one. You asked for “actual projects” and YouTube is one of the biggest and most popular platforms out there. That you personally dislike it is irrelevant.
ETL tools can execute python as part of a multi step process and then yeah they use python in their data pipeline, but the ETL tool that orchestrates it is which is the actual value add software is not written in Python it’s written in Java
So what’s your point, that interpreted languages don’t count because they’re interpreted? Why stop there? It’s the actual C compiler that was used to compile the JRE that brings the value here, so your ETL tool doesn’t count.
You’re either a troll or a joke.
If you dont know the difference between software and script I am not sure I can explain it to you…
That distinction is not relevant at all in this discussion.
But hey, I think that’s one I know: should count as a strawman.
I work in investment banking environments (calculations). Python is everywhere. Java and C++ as well.
Yeah calculations, not actual software… how is this hard to understand… you don’t write long lived, stable software that multiple developers work on that needs to do real work in python
So, calculations are not actual software… I’ll stop there.
No, it’s a script
Well, no
It might not be a fad, but it’s definitely a local maximum and/or a limitation that many devs seem to be stuck with.
Hi, I’ve been doing TypeScript in my day-job and hobbies for six and a bit years now. I would not write JS in any other way.
TS is also a superset of JS so all JS is valid (unless you turn on
strictmode). So there is no productivity loss/learning curve unless you want there to be.In fact, a lot of people who think they’re not using typescript are using it because their editors use typescript definitions for autocomplete and JSDoc type signatures are powered by typescript.
So there is no productivity loss/learning curve unless you want there to be.
It’s not significant but an extra build step can be annoying
I’ll riot if I ever need to write pure js again. 98% of web devs would be better served writing in TS. If you’re actually knowledgeable enough to write more efficient js, more power to you but honestly I was probably being generous saying 2% of web devs fall into that category.
Even then, it just leaves behind an illegible mess that the next dev has to gut and replace with typescript later. If someone wants to use JS on their hobby project, go for it. The extra tools that types enable are super valuable for a team.
I believe both are true… and I also develop a LOT in Angular (with TypeScript).
TypeScript is great but the thing is that if you look at the history of TypeScript and JS/ECMAScript you’ll find out that TypeScript sometimes is the testing ground for the future features of ECMAScript - pretty much like what happens with Sass and CSS that how even has nesting and scopes.
The issue with TypeScript/Sass etc. is that it requires a compiler and that’s totally obnoxious and completely defeats the point of having interpreted code on browsers. Depending on the project it might be better to go for TypeScript + Angular/React or other compiled solution or simply something vanilla with jQuery or the Vue runtime (no compilation) and other libraries.
If TypeScript ever goes away the underlaying features that make it great will be implemented in ECMAScript in the same way that we got modules, classes etc. and I really hope it happens. Less compilation usually equals code more maintainable in the long run because you won’t require hundreds of dependencies (that will eventually break) to get it to compile.
TypeScript sometimes is the testing ground for the future features of ECMAScript
They have an explicit policy to only include features that are stage 3 already (i.e. that are pretty much certain to land in the language as-is). The only times they’ve diverged from this is long in the past (I think
enumis the main remnant of that, for which I’d recommend using unions of literal string types instead), andexperimentalDecoratorsunder pressure from Angular - which has always been behind a flag explicitly named experimental.So I really wouldn’t worry too much about that.
Oh I’m not worried, at all.
The issue with TypeScript/Sass etc. is that it requires a compiler and that’s totally obnoxious and completely defeats the point of having interpreted code on browsers.
Shouldn’t WebAssembly be a solution to this? I.e. so you don’t have to interpret code but rather run the wasm binary (which is kinda interpretation as well but you get what I mean).
I love seeing webassembly getting traction because it enable cool stuff never thought possible before running in web browsers. But webassembly is a blackbox that can’t be tinkered with by end users. I dread the day webassembly become so widely used that average websites run under webassembly because that would be the end of blocking ads or tweaking websites behavior with greasemonkey scripts.
I don’t think adblockers rely on interpreting JavaScript, I think they would still work even if a site used WebAssembly.
Source: I can assure you every single ad-funded website would be doing this if that was the case.
ublock origin won’t help you blocking the ad elements if the entire website ui is rendered in a canvas (already starting to happen thanks to some frameworks like flutter) and can’t block the ad logic if it bundled in the wasm along with the rest of the app. It might still able to block the requests, but they’re starting to serve the ads from the same domain that serves the website so it can’t be blocked without breaking the website itself, and might begin to serve those over websocket so adblockers can’t block it by url path. With javascript, an ad blocker might still be able to monkey patch the ad logic on runtime to break it, but with black box like wasm I’m not sure if such thing is possible.
Once tooling and frameworks make it easier for average webdevs to use webasm, I’m sure ad companies will begin to offer it in their ads sdk. Thankfully most websites with ads are still care about SEO so at the very least we can be sure it won’t happen anytime soon, unless something changes in how google works that could enable this.
the entire website ui is rendered in a canvas (already starting to happen thanks to some frameworks like flutter)
That sounds like an accessibility nightmare.
Have you tried not being disabled?
Flutter devs actually defended this approach, saying the web in general is moving to this direction. I think they’ve mellowed out somewhat and released html renderer support, though it’s still default to canvas for desktop web browsers.
That’s not a solution, it is the exact opposite - adding even more compilation and complexity to things. The ideia is to move away from compiled stuff as much as possible. WebAssembly makes sense for very complex and low level stuff that you can’t run interpreted with reasonable performance.
Less compilation usually equals code more maintainable in the long run. Think about it: if you don’t need a compiler and the hundreds of dependencies that will eventually break things will last way more time. Websites from the 90’s still work fine on modern browsers and you can update them easily while compiled stuff is game over once you lose the ability to install run said compiler and related dependencies.
Think about it: if you don’t need a compiler and the hundreds of dependencies that will eventually break things will last way more time.
You can have hundreds of dependencies whether you use a compiled or interpreted language, that really has nothing to do with that.
Also compilation has lots of benefits, including being able to do lots of static analysis to find bugs. I definitely don’t agree that we should move away from compilation in general or WebAssembly specifically. WebAssembly doesn’t have to be only used for low level stuff, you can write your code in a high level language and compile to WebAssembly just fine.
