I’ve been meaning to get this off my chest for a while now — TypeScript sucks.
I know this will hurt many passionate opinionated snowflakes out there, but there, I said it. Fuck TypeScript. You love TypeScript? Great. Good for you. I hate that so much of the frontend tooling has migrated over to it.
TypeScript has singlehandedly ruined my love for frontend development. There’re already hundreds of tools for the frontend development experience (DX). Adding one more isn’t the problem. The negative impact it has on the DX is. The extra compilation, the general vibe of coding in TypeScript, the added mental load when starting new projects, the extra language on top of something you could totally code in etc.
If TypeScript were a language by itself, I wouldn’t mind it. I’m ok with the language. But…it’s a language that compiles to another language and that language is what gets used in the browser. Don’t give me the “why bother writing C? Why not just write Assembly?” argument. Shove it up your ass. That’s one of the dumbest, ill-informed arguments ever.
First it was CoffeeScript, then Babel, then TypeScript. They are all different, but have a lot of similarities. One main trait they all have in common is the degraded DX. IMHO, Babel did a lot good in pushing JavaScript and helping keep up with the latest syntax and other good stuff.
TypeScript is more focused on types in JavaScript, but it does add several other language features. Picking up TypeScript is quite straightforward. Barely a few minutes, really. But the dev overhead, my goodness. It’s no fun.
Simply put, it lacks taste.
I 100% agree with DHH on his views around TypeScript.
For me, TypeScript doesn’t spark joy. It sparks darkness, misery, self-loathing, and depression. I have to use it at work, so I’ll use it. In my personal projects though, I just won’t.
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