nominal VS typescript-runtime-type-benchmarks

Hey OP here, Wanted to share something we recently discovered in typescript. This is a way to to create haskell style Newtype using the lesser known \`symbols\` ```ts type Minutes = number type Seconds = number const minutesToSeconds = (minutes: Minutes) => minutes * 60 const seconds: Seconds = 420 // uh-oh, we can use Minutes and Seconds interchangeably minutesToSeconds(seconds) ``` Nominal types solve this problem ```ts import { Nominal, nominal } from 'nominal-types'; type Minutes = Nominal<'Minutes', number>; type Seconds = Nominal<'Seconds', number>; const minutesToSeconds = (minutes: Minutes) => minutes * 60 // You can directly type cast or use nominal.make const seconds = nominal.make(420) const minutes = 1337 as Minutes // doesn't work, yay type safety minutesToSeconds(seconds) // does work! minutesToSeconds(minutes) ``` We have some lot cooler examples https://github.com/modfy/nominal#examples You can also read more about it here: https://zackoverflow.dev/writing/nominal-and-refinement-types-typescript

Has been heavily optimized, both in terms of its types and runtime performance. Even including the static parser, many types are about an order of magnitude more efficient than equivalent Zod. Early results show it as marginally faster than any validator currently published to typescript-runtime-type-benchmarks, not including more complex cases where (2) would give ArkType a much more significant advantage.

Zod is a bit of an underdog but it is not fast, AJV which is slightly more common can validate and generate types too but requires using JSON syntax, TypeBox offers familiar syntax to Zod while still being JSON syntax in the background.

First, they're not fast (runtime type checking benchmarks).

Aha, so you're using a library in Java for this. You know about libraries in TS for this, there are plenty of them btw, but you don't use them because it's so easy. Express has `any` type for `req.body` because authors don't care about this either and it's so easy. And TypeScript is the one to blame in that you prefer to work with `any` type for incoming data rather than validating it.

It is so much faster than Zod that Zod basically doesn't show, https://moltar.github.io/typescript-runtime-type-benchmarks/ and according to bundlejs, https://bundlejs.com/?q=zod%2Czod%2C%40sinclair%2Ftypebox&treeshake=%5B*%5D%2C%5B%7B+default+%7D%5D%2C%5B*%5D&config=%7B%22analysis%22%3Atrue%7D, it is even smaller. I genuinely have no clue why Zod is this popular in 2023.

TypeBox is a bit different to other libraries in this space where it's mostly intended to be used with a auxiliary JSON Schema validator. Although it provides a built in JSON Schema compiler (which is currently the fastest (not-AOT) runtime validator available for JavaScript today), it's equally intended to be used with validators like Ajv (or any other standards compliant validator)

I do plan to add some direct comparisons to https://github.com/moltar/typescript-runtime-type-benchmarks as well but haven't had a chance yet.

I think it's more of a case of the extremely low performance bar that's been set by the status quo (for even the simplest of validation structures). There's been a lot of focus on the TS type inference, and less on the runtime performance (which actually matters more as it does reduce operational costs). It probably wouldn't be such an issue if the performance was reasonable, but I mean here's the full breakdown https://moltar.github.io/typescript-runtime-type-benchmarks/.

I found a benchmark for runtime performance, but I haven't found any for intellisense/editor performance.