The Reason These Devs HATE TypeScript (& React)

I love TypeScript. Not everyone does. That's okay. Let's talk about why some devs...aren't as into TypeScript, and how this will affect React over time.

S/O Ph4seOne for the awesome edit 🙏

[samuelgunter]

i really want to know why these "important devs" hate writing applications in Brainfuck

[kubre]

I like when I press " . " and I see what I can access

[sam.]

TS is cool. React, not so much. My QoL on side projects has gone up 100x since I started playing with other frameworks like Solid and Svelte. Unfortunately, these newer frameworks don't have very developed job markets yet, but it looks like Svelte is getting adopted pretty quickly.

[CottidaeSEA]

TypeScript isn't good. Typed languages are good.

[GuilhermeTeixeira]

God I hate these click-baiti-ish popping eyes so much that I'll just unsubscribe everyone doing that in order to preserve my mental health when on YouTube. I love your content but I can't handle that any longer.

[KenBanksPEng]

I appreciate the benefits of types, especially as size of software and number of people scales up. I start to doubt the benefits at smaller scales when I see more effort being put into working through complex types than into the code itself. My DX has greatly improved after switching from React/TS to Svelte/TS.

[brennan]

It's not just library devs. It's app devs who try to use abstraction and functional programming (not what React thinks is FP, think more like abstraction, currying, partial application, and composition) who are frequently frustrated with Typescript. I know in my own React codebases it's moved much more towards an imperative / Golang style of verbosity instead of a more FP / Haskell style because coming up with good reusable primitives that are abstract wreak havoc when you try to implement them in Typescript. I find myself having to write much more verbose code and ignore DRY principles. I tend to duplicate a lot of code because creating the abstraction, while easy and simple in JS, is a pain in TS. I'd rather not spend 90% of my development time fighting TS. It also hurts you and makes you scared to even think about abstractions because you can't even imagine doing it because the TS would be so unreadable.

[CrispyCuda]

Have you considered that needing to wrap things "15 times" (I assume and hope this is hyperbole) to pass types correctly suggests typescript, your implementation, or both are bad?

[augustoeduardo]

As a react and svelte developer. Svelte has a much better experience and faster development, state its not an complex issue. React now its changing server components in Nextjs are good, hope they keep improving

[taufiqidr]

TypeScript without having to define all the types sounds a lot like plain JavaScript

[gosnooky]

I love TypeScript. HOWEVER, it's guilt by JavaScript association. What the world needs is a dedicated TS runtime, with RUNTIME type safety. A good interpreter or bytecode generator that can retain type information such as interfaces would be a fantastic ecosystem. For now, it's still just fancy JS, and all the baggage that implies.

The biggest issue I have with the JS/Node/NPM ecosystem is the shocking lack of standards and conventions. I came from the Java world, and for better or worse, the Java ecosystem has excellent standards and conventions that nearly all developers using it adhere to.

[arcanernz]

In a sufficiently large codebase with just JavaScript you'll end up wasting a lot more time fixing dumb bugs and printing out random objects cause no one knows what it actually should be vs just using TypeScript/JSDoc from the beginning.

[codeChuck]

Yes, normally, app devs do not know how hard it is to create and MAINTAIN for a long period of time a TS library. We just use libs. We think it is easy, but actually any abstraction in TS is so hard to do correctly, if you are not experienced TS user. Great thank you to the library creators and maintainers! You are holding the pillars on which the web software is build!

[kibe]

In my experience, TS is fine if you don't try to type everything, as soon as you do, chaos starts to happen. If you trust the backend devs, you should be able to use any in API responses, for example. React, though, is a whole other problem. Even if we ignore how weird contexts and hooks are, how stupid it is that you can only call hooks on the top level of functions, and only when inside componentes (I know it's not good practice, but go and try to build an abstraction on top of something that uses hooks, I dare you), React is just... Weird. Currently using Vue, it's made me realize just how unintuitive React can be.

[offroaders]

I understand why people are kicking back on the TypeScript and JavaScript ecosystems, I feel like seeing all of the tech YouTubers do that are increasing my imposter syndrome though, which sucks. It kind of makes me feel like learning these languages haven't been worthwhile, because they "suck". I know there are other options out there, why can't it just be ok to like something, aah! Feels kind of discouraging to keep hearing that take. Rather than say it's so bad, it would be really cool to see someone demo out a web app in Rust or something, rather than just saying that JS is bad and we shouldn't use it. 😜

[jonnyso]

After using Rust for a while Typescript feels like a mistake every time I use it. I'm too dumb to figure out why, but TS just feels extremely clunky, like a language that has a type system but doesn't want to.

PS: Also, its weird seeing devs picking a typed language only to try and desperately run away from actually using the type system.

[ivonakis]

I am new to the TS and React. And already stumbled upon several big libs where the types are missing, wrong or incomplete. Still haven't fully embraced the TS future.

[howuseehim]

Did you know that company of all sizes use Big query?

[johnhershberg]

Typescript was a mistake. It fooled us into thinking Javascript is viable for writing apps outside of the browser.

[RemotHuman]

don't you have to write library-like code in order to make a very unique application?