YouTube Transcript:
Big projects are ditching TypeScript… why?

it is September 7th 2023 and you are
watching the code report it many years
ago in 2017 legendary JavaScript user
Kent C Dodds said I don't use typescript
so I don't ever plan on supporting it in
2019 he goes on to say you are
impassioned love of typescript is sort
of freaking me out and finally in 2023
comes capitulation typescript is one and
it's only a matter of time you're using
it whether you like it or not but this
is the sign of a good developer you have
to be open-minded and willing to adapt
to new tools and sometimes tools you
don't even like but the big question
here is did typescript really win
because recently the turns have started
to table a bunch of big open source
projects have decided to ditch
typescript in favor of vanilla
JavaScript to understand the shocking
turn of events we'll need to go back to
the very beginning in 2012 when
typescript was first released by
Microsoft nobody really cared at first
but then a few years later it was
adopted by the angular 2 framework which
everybody thought was crazy but here's
the thing first they think you're crazy
then they fight you then you change the
world or you go to jail by the early
2020s typescript was everywhere where at
which point most of its haters had been
converted into True Believers but now
right as we're about to reach the
Glorious climax of typescript saturation
you've got big libraries like svelte
drizzle and turbo deciding to ditch
typescript from their code bases to be
clear that just means that they're not
going to use typescript When developing
these libraries but as an end user in a
framework like svelt for example you're
still able to use typescript just like
normal but how could anyone possibly go
back to vanilla JS after using
typescript did they not remember runtime
errors like cannot read properties of
undefined did they not remember how hard
it is to refactor a code base where you
have no idea what anything is well these
people are a lot smarter than I am so
let's first look at this article from
dhh that creator of Ruby on Rails who's
getting rid of typescript and turbo
version 8. the main reason they're
getting rid of it is not because of the
compile step but rather because it
pollutes the code with quote type
gymnastics and there's a lot of Truth to
that especially when developing a
library I'm working on a library myself
called svelt fire and as you can see in
the code here I have to do my own type
gymnastics with typescript just to get
rid of some red squiggly lines in the
IDE now I could simply place this type
with any and not get any type inference
but then my boss would yell at me he's a
total who will abuse me emotionally and
physically if I don't code up to his
standards it's not easy being
self-employed furthermore I have the
compiler in strict mode which means I
have to use any anytime I don't want to
use an explicit type and that results in
code that's anything but beautiful let's
head over to turbo on GitHub and see how
people are reacting to this change well
it's an absolute dumpster fire and a lot
of developers are upset that their ts
contributions are now Dead on Arrival
but another huge project moving away
from typescript is spelled and the
reasoning is a bit different it's purely
practical and I recommend you read this
post by Rich Harris spelled 5 which may
come out later this year no longer uses
typescript and spelled kit is already
written in plain vanilla.js and the main
benefit is no compile step which is a
huge boost in productivity for a large
framework like this that may sound like
total chaos for a large complex project
but they're actually still getting most
of the benefits of typescript but doing
so with JS talk which is a standard
comment format where you declare types
and documentation with regular
JavaScript comments that can then be
used to generate rate types like a d.ts
file and most importantly provide
intellisense in your editor so you know
what the hell everything does and can
catch bugs early just like you can with
typescript that's the main reason I use
typescript in the first place so is it
time to just ditch it all together well
when it comes to building actual
applications with a tool like spell kit
or next JS I don't see myself leaving
typescript anytime soon those tools
integrate TS seamlessly and trying to
get the same results with JS doc would
be a total nightmare but one day I hope
we see the end of this holy war there's
currently a stage 1 ecmascript proposal
that would add optional type annotations
to JavaScript natively thus making
typescripts nearly obsolete this has
been the code report thanks for watching
and I will see you in the next one