JSDoc VS Standard

You may like JSDoc[1] if you just want some type-safety from the IDE without the compilation overhead.

It’s done wonders when I’ve had to wrangle poorly commented legacy JavaScript codebases where most of the overhead is tracing what type the input parameters are.

Personally, I’m impartial to TypeScript or JSDoc at this point. But I’d rather have either over plain JavaScript.

[1] https://jsdoc.app/

I wholeheartedly agree. At most, I introduce JSDoc[1] to newer developers as standardising how parameters and whatnot are commented at least gets you better documentation and _some_ safety without adding any TS knowledge overhead.

[1] https://jsdoc.app/

This is where JSDoc comes to save the day.

The best way to do this, of course, is with JSDoc. But something I always found awkward about jsdoc is defining the object types in the same file. So, after a lot of reading, I found a way to combine JSDoc with declaration type files from Typescript. Let me give you an example:

There is a lot of specific symbols presented on the JSDOC specification that can be found here: https://jsdoc.app

JSDoc is a specification for the comment format in JavaScript. This specification allows developers to describe the structure of their code, data types, function parameters, and much more using special comments. These comments can then be transformed into documentation using appropriate tools.

Working with new features, frameworks, and tools, the experience of reading documentation is a critical part of it. I have been lucky to work with projects that feature really easy to read documentation such as USWDS and Bun, but I've also had the misfortune to work with pretty terrible documentation like JSDoc. The JSDoc documentation lacks a search field which makes searching for specific items an ordeal and also does not cover many hidden use cases. It provides less than the bare minimum for what it needs to do - a lot of the time I am forced to rely on external user documentation elsewhere to use JSDoc effectively. That was why I was drawn to the search field in particular in Docusaurus.

The Svelte team followed suit but motivated by the maintainer's developer experience as they migrated the project away from TypeScript in favor of plain JSDoc comments for type annotations instead.

Even more relevant, tools like Javadoc, JSDoc, Doxygen, etc. read comments in a specific format to generate documentation. These comments do not affect readability. On the contrary, Javadocs are great for explaining how to use these entities. Combined with tools like my dear Doctest, we even get guarantees of accuracy and correctness!

Document types with JSDoc annotations

I picked up standard[1] a while back for this reason, I don't want to have to think about it. It works fine, I have no complaints (took me a while to get used to not using semi-colons but now I prefer it) Same reason I use `cargo fmt` as well.

[1] https://standardjs.com/

# question 1: ? How would you like to use ESLint? … To check syntax only To check syntax and find problems ❯ To check syntax, find problems, and enforce code style # question 2: ? What type of modules does your project use? … ❯ JavaScript modules (import/export) CommonJS (require/exports) None of these # question 3: ? Which framework does your project use? … ❯ React Vue.js None of these # question 4 (select "No", because we won't add TypeScript support for this project): ? Does your project use TypeScript? › No / Yes # question 5: ? Where does your code run? … Browser ✔ Node # question 6: ? How would you like to define a style for your project? … ❯ Use a popular style guide Answer questions about your style Inspect your JavaScript file(s) # question 7 (we'll rely on Airbnb's JavaScript style guide here): ? Which style guide do you want to follow? … ❯ Airbnb: https://github.com/airbnb/javascript Standard: https://github.com/standard/standard Google: https://github.com/google/eslint-config-google # question 8: ? What format do you want your config file to be in? … JavaScript YAML ❯ JSON # the final prompt here is where eslint will ask you if you want to install all the necessary dependencies. Select "Yes" and hit enter: Checking peerDependencies of eslint-config-airbnb@latest The config that you have selected requires the following dependencies: eslint-plugin-react@^7.21.5 eslint-config-airbnb@latest eslint@^5.16.0 || ^6.8.0 || ^7.2.0 eslint-plugin-import@^2.22.1 eslint-plugin-jsx-a11y@^6.4.1 eslint-plugin-react-hooks@^4 || ^3 || ^2.3.0 || ^1.7.0 ? Would you like to install them now with npm? › No / Yes

A Thin JavaScript Document Storage with Middleware Stack

https://github.com/standard/standard/issues/384

For example, if you use https://standardjs.com/ - it will error on your second code snippet and if you ask it for an autofix - it will transfer the minus sign to the first line.

In comparison, JavaScript doesn't have a strict coding standard, although it does have widely accepted code style guides like the Airbnb JavaScript Style Guide and the JavaScript Standard Style. These guides provide recommendations for code formatting and naming conventions, but they are not as strictly enforced as the Java coding standard.