TDungeon VS ts-reset

I did not write the blog post, it was just a simple infer/extends non-trivial example explained in depth, commonly used in packages like express and so forth. TDungeon [1], a game running on the TypeScript type system, really showcases how powerful the type system truly is.

Why not C#? Probably because Anders Hejlsberg [2], lead architect of C# and core developer of TypeScript, wanted something different.

[1] https://github.com/cassiozen/TDungeon

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Hejlsberg

TypeScript's standard library contains over 1,000 instances of the any type. There are many opportunities to improve the developer experience when working with strictly typed code. One solution to avoid having to fix the standard library yourself is to use the ts-reset library. It is easy to use and only needs to be imported once in your project.

You might like TS Reset: https://github.com/total-typescript/ts-reset, which fixes this particular problem. I don't personally find it to be a big issue though.

Regarding runtime type checking, if you were to write something that can handle the total space of possible TS types, you would end up with incredibly complex machinery. It would be hard to make it perform, both in terms of speed and bundle size, and it would be hard to predict. I think Zod or perhaps https://arktype.io/ which target a reasonable subset are the only way to go.

https://github.com/total-typescript/ts-reset <-- this fixes the `(string | undefined)[]` issue and a few other quirks. Obviously it's annoying to need a library to fix quirks, but better than nothing.

Dude is an actual TypeScript wizard, his ts-reset package is a must have when dealing with JSON. He was featured in the VS Code day streams to show off some introductory TypeScript concepts and my big takeaway from that stream was this VS Code extension. Just stick // ^? on the line after something and it shows the type of the line above. Amazing with Prisma.

Personally I quite like ts-reset to "fix" some of the std lib types - JSON.parse will now return unknown. It's then up to you to decide how you wish to parse that unknown (zod, runtypes, io-ts are all reasonable options here). Won't ever be done by TS itself, as generating runtime code is a non-goal for the project.

🛠️ Extremely strict TypeScript - With ts-reset library for ultimate type safety

Ok, answered it myself: it was a perfect use case for ts-reset: https://github.com/total-typescript/ts-reset