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0 pointsa13n6y ago0 comments

> safety and correctness features

You can achieve safety and correctness features for node via good lint rules and typescript/flow.

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6 comments · 1 top-level

Nextgrid6y ago· 5 in thread

You can technically achieve all of that even in an obscure language like Brainfuck but it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.

Why would you duct tape hacks on top of hacks to achieve the result you want instead of using a language that has already all of the functionality built-in?

bfrydl6y ago

I find it really annoying how JavaScript is treated on developer forums like this one. Why is it that when the same exact things are done in a typical language it's called “tooling” but in JavaScript it's “duct tape hacks on top of hacks”?

Don't get me wrong, my favorite language is Rust, but pretending the JavaScript ecosystem is unusable doesn't make you cool. I can be extremely productive in TypeScript.

Nextgrid6y ago

JavaScript itself is not a hack, it works fine for its original purpose - making webpages interactive.

What I consider hacks is the hundreds of different tools and dialects of JS that are used to bend JS into doing something it wasn’t really designed for.

JS is fine in the browser, and TypeScript is also fine there because you don’t really have the choice to run anything different (although Web Assembly might change the game soon). But on the backend you have the privilege to pick between dozens of different languages that are better suited to the task and support the features you want out of the box without layering hacks on top. Why not just go with one of those?

kevstev6y ago

I can appreciate your suspicion of a dynamically typed language, but type script isn't really a "hack" its a superset of the language. I am not a huge fan of it, to me its kind of the worst of both worlds- if you need type safety, use something else.

However, if you haven't taken a look at Joi- https://hapi.dev/family/joi/?v=16.1.8 you probably should. To me this was a very happy medium- you can enforce your "types" at the point of ingress and egress at your api, and even do validations there, while still being able to enjoy the flexibility of type safety within your code.

rclayton6y ago

Lol - I don’t think I’ve ever met someone as enamored with Joi as I am. I think I abuse it in all the same ways as you do. I even publish my Joi schemas for request validation with my API specifications.

a13nOP6y ago

We chose JavaScript/Node because it's the language we knew best, and because we have to write it in the client as we're building a web-based service. No other language offers us that, unless it compiles to JavaScript (eg TypeScript).

This grants us a magnitude of benefits, like being able to do server-side rendering and share code between the client and server. It also means we only need to hire people who can write JS, instead of JS and something else.

TypeScript, Flow, and ESLint aren't hacks. These are mature tools used by some of the largest, most sophisticated engineering teams in the world.

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