Comment by davidatbu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by davidatbu | Hacker News Reader

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I absolutely love typescript!

But recently, I found out about ReasonML, an ML-family language transpiled to JS that, from a distance, looks like something I'd like over TS in every aspect except one (third party typings): much more terse algebraic sum types(tagged unions), more terse code in general, incredible compile times, and named arguments[0].

To top all of that, "reason-react"[1] claims that "Reason syntax and language features are a better match for React programming patterns", and I am very inclined to agree already.

I'd love to hear folks' experience with ReasonML, or pointers to blog posts such as these where companies write up their experience.

[0] https://blog.dubenko.dev/typescript-vs-reason/

[1] https://reasonml.github.io/reason-react/docs/en/what-and-why

ReasonML looks interesting but how do you go about debugging it even with sourcemaps? Its types don't even have the same paradigms.

The article was using strawman comparisons in some places. The getPhone example should have used optional chaining:

  const getPhone = (form: Form) : number | undefined => form?.user?.phone

> debugging.

Another point in TS's favor.

> strawman's comparisons in some places

Not sure, but this might be because the article was written before/around when the relevant features were merged into TS. For example, optional chaining was added to TS a month after the blog was published[0].

I do thank you for pointing that out though, as it's totally relevant.

[0] https://github.com/microsoft/TypeScript/pull/33294

Records in ReasonML are represented as arrays. And generated code looks like a human wrote it if humans could remember indices of every property of every type like a compiler does.

So ReasonML is compiled into somewhat obfuscated Javascript that won't be naturally consumable by vanilla Javascript, whereas Typescript transpiles into Javascript with the same API without typings (type erasure).

Yes, I guess "interoperability with existing and future JS code" is a comparison that favors TS.

It has the same creator as React as well (Jordan Walke)

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