(The below is a collection of my thoughts and resources in preparing for the talk, for the actual talk content, see the actual talk)
- Closure Compiler - Nominal Typing
- TypeScript - Structural Typing
- Flow - Nominal Typing (with structural typing for interfaces)
https://developers.google.com/closure/compiler/
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(+) Uses annotations to provide type information rather than a specialised JS syntax.
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(-) Community quite small, limited "externs" support.
https://www.typescriptlang.org/
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(+) Used node module resolution strategy by default now. This is a significant advantage as you can connect and make use of a large collection of existing packages.
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(+) Strong community, lots of "externs" definitions.
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(-) Custom syntax while probably necessary does mean that the language may depart from the direction of ES? as things progress. Not really a problem now, but could be a migration headache in the future.
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(+) Build with OCaml rather than TypeScript (kudos though) or Java. OCaml has a solid history of being able to construct compilers for alt languages (such as HaXe).
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(+) default declarations are non-nullable. A nullable declaration requires a
?prefix.
https://docs.onux.com/en-US/Developers/JavaScript-PP
- Our dependence / use of libraries like jQuery is something we should significantly lessen or remove entirely. jQuery has done a lot of good in the past, but it has almost no chance of ever being close to succesfully type checkable.
// show jquery extern example- Typed JS patterns work best in a closed ecosystem. Use in the construction of libraries that will be consumed in an unknown environment still requires defensive JS coding patterns.