Show HN: Luanalysis – Statically type checked Lua IDE | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Luanalysis – Statically type checked Lua IDE

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Just released v1.4.0 of my open source Lua IDE (Jetbrains plugin) with support for optional bolt-on types specified as regular Lua comments.

Biggest new feature is support for optional parameters (previously supported, but cumbersome with overloads).

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There's a lot of considerations and trade-offs when implementing your own type system. Do you want the type system to be 100% sound, or do you want it to be convenient to use?

This comes up regularly, and recently did so again when implementing variance of functions with optional parameters. Essentially, I opted for convenience over soundness. Consider the following TS which will crash at runtime, but is permitted by TS' type system:

    type NoParams = () => void
    type OptionalStringParam = (a?: string) => void
    type OptionalNumberParam = (a?: number) => void

    let noParams: NoParams = () => {}
    let optionalStringParam: OptionalStringParam = str => console.log(str?.toUpperCase() || "Nothing")
    let optionalNumberParam: OptionalNumberParam = num => console.log(num !== undefined ? (num / 2) : "Nothing")

    noParams = optionalStringParam
    optionalNumberParam = noParams

    optionalNumberParam(2)

Basically, `noParams = optionalStringParam` probably shouldn't be allowed. But in the general case, it is certainly convenient. So I opted for the same in my own type system.

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