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I’ve seen this same thing happen with Python’s type hints. Turns out giving an “escape hatch” type for devs who have no clue what the type actually is leads to a lot of useless type hints.
Yeah, it’s especially bad, when a library doesn’t provide type hints itself. It can be comically difficult to find out what the return type of a function is, because every if-else-branch might have a different return value, so you may need to read the function body in full to figure out what the type might be.
Add to that, that lots of the tooling around type hints isn’t as fleshed out / useful as it is in fully typed languages and I can definitely understand why someone might not immediately feel like it’s a valuable use of their time.
Sounds like you don’t know how to properly use TypeScript…
If I had the willpower or time to go through a multi-thousand line (not including the html templates) legacy Angular 6 codebase where almost every property is typed ‘any’ then I assure you I would have, it’s driving me insane 🙃, also why I prefer backend
I kinda feel your pain. A project that I helped launch is written in Typescript technically, but the actual on-the-ground developers were averse to using type safety, so
anyis used everywhere. So, it becomes worst of both worlds, and the code is a mess (I don’t have authority in the project anymore, and wouldn’t touch it even if I could).I’m also annoyed at some level because some of the devs are pretty junior, and I fear they are going to go forward thinking Typescript or type safety in general is bad, which hurts my type-safety-loving-soul
In theory I’m a fan of the inferred but static typing systems that most modern languages use (kotlin, rust, TS, etc.) where most local variable types can be inferred and only return types/object fields/parameters need explicit types.
I just despise typescript because it feels more like someone put a bandaid over JavaScript and all of its oddities instead of making a properly fleshed out language, and allowing the option for an ‘any’ type to be used freely by default emphasizes that.
Based on your description it sounds like you haven’t given it a fair shake. I’ll take TS over JS any day, at least there is room for improvement. I will say however I personally haven’t been unlucky enough to run into projects that abuse the any type. The worst I’ve run into is a JS library with no typings I have to manually type.
I imagine what they mean is e.g. that TypeScript can tell you something is a
Date, but it doesn’t attempt to fix some of the confusing, quirky behaviour with that: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Date#interpretation_of_two-digit_yearsSo, yes, it’s generally better than JS, but it doesn’t actually make it good/attractive, if you’re used to the sanity of backend languages. It very much feels like lipstick on a pig.
The boy scout technique: fix your types when you’re working on a bug or a feature, one file at a time. Also try to use
unknowninstead ofanyfor more sensitive parts, it will force you to typecheck.The fuck the lemons technique: resign and seek an employer that didn’t fail at the most basic level of engineering management and development culture for years and years — because life is short and we’re all running out of time… always.
When life hands you lemons, just say fuck the lemons and bail
combustible lemon
