Hacker News Reader

Comment by seanwilson | Hacker News Reader

> But doesn't Typescript compile to JS, thus there's actually no type-checking at runtime?

Sure, but that's what happens in every other language e.g. C's type system will enforce certain properties for you but when you compile to machine code the machine code is not checking those properties at runtime. If you know the compiler is correct you don't have to worry.

Nobody is saying you should stop writing tests but a good type system will mean you have to write less tests because the type system will do some of the checking for you in a more robust way.

View on HN

Q: What is a concrete advantage of Typescript?

A: C's type system is very useful for data validation.

Please read at least one sentence before writing a response next time.

You claimed that the lack of type checking at runtime is somehow detrimental to the notion. He pointed out that, fundamentally, all strongly typed languages run as weakly typed machine code at runtime, giving C as one obvious example. Thus, types in TS are at least as useful as types in C.

The concrete advantage of TS is the same as the concrete advantage of any strongly typed language - types let you do static validation, and unlike tests, they allow for that validation to be provably complete (of course, the domain of constraints that can be so validated depends on the power of the type system in question).

Yes, but what about mutating objects/primitives in a way that causes all validations to pass but still be passing the wrong data?

It seems like using type checking as a reason to write fewer tests actually just creates nastier bugs in areas where your coverage is based on type validation.

What am I missing about checking type mutation !== mutation being a problem?

What is the advantage of strong types if your data structures are immutable? Is there any? I'm genuinely trying to understand if TS is just for cases where uncontrolled mutation is the norm and test coverage is poor.

Immutability is also something you can model in the type system (not currently in Typescript, but it is possible in other languages).

That said, immutability by itself won't save you from passing the wrong shape of immutable object into a function, just as validating the shape of the argument passed and the argument expected against each other won't help if there are other assumptions being made by the code (such as that the object cannot be mutated). As one of the parent comments pointed out, types are proofs. Not everything can be proved to a compiler, but (assuming a bug-free compiler) everything which can be proved to a compiler does not need any additional tests. Things which cannot be proved to a compiler will need tests, of course.

> Yes, but what about mutating objects/primitives in a way that causes all validations to pass but still be passing the wrong data? > What is the advantage of strong types if your data structures are immutable? Is there any? I'm genuinely trying to understand if TS is just for cases where uncontrolled mutation is the norm and test coverage is poor.

Can you give an example? I'm not following what you mean. Why would strong types be less useful if your data structures are immutable? OCaml mostly uses immutable data structures for example but its strong type system is fundamental to why it can be used to write such robust code.

Typescript has a stronger type system than JavaScript so Typescript can therefore capture more program properties statically compared to JavaScript whether you're using mutable data structures or not.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com