ts-reset VS proposal-type-annotations

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

That proposal is not fully compatible with Typescript: https://github.com/tc39/proposal-type-annotations?tab=readme...

They held a meeting a few months ago so it's alive but probably still years away.

https://github.com/tc39/proposal-type-annotations/issues/184

I particularly like this thread in the TC39 types proposal. TypeScript IS a development trojan horse and locks you into the Microsoft Way of being a JS developer.

Edit: There is a proposal to extend JavaScript with type annotations, which would allow ("a reasonably large subset") of TypeScript to run directly in the browser. Yay!

https://github.com/tc39/proposal-type-annotations

More importantly, TypeScript typically commits to build things into itself when the proposal in JavaScript reaches Stage 3. The pattern matching proposal in JavaScript is Stage 1, but depends on many other proposals as well that may or may not need to be at Stage 3 as well for it to work. This particular proposal is interested on pattern matching on JavaScript Objects and other primitives, just like Python does with it’s native primitives. These are also dynamic types which helps in some areas, but makes it harder than others. Additionally, the JavaScript type annotations proposal needs to possibly account for this. So it’s going to be awhile. Like many years.

this is exactly what I want from the _Types as Comments_ proposal[0] as I think it's the only way that types can feasibly become part of the language. It's hard to imagine how all of the concepts TS introduces via special syntax can be covered otherwise.

[0] https://tc39.es/proposal-type-annotations

Crossing my fingers that the proposal for allowing (browser-ignored) type annotations in javascript progresses: https://tc39.es/proposal-type-annotations/

Between that, HTTP2/3 and ES modules many of the downsides for building apps with no compile step are almost completely mitigated.

JSDoc can get you pretty far, but it can be clumsy sometimes. There’s a [TC39 proposal](https://github.com/tc39/proposal-type-annotations) to allow types to live in JS code and be treated as comments (similar with Python types today)