Transition from JavaScript to TypeScript for improved maintainability

[NalinDalal]

Topic

Introduce TypeSafety, Lint Checking for Organisation.
I saw that some of code was in typescript, since typescript provide compile time type checking, more strictness, command over the project, hence I propose under GSoC 2025 a project:
migrate the codebase to TypeScript

Advantages:

• Explicit Typing, Support for OOPs
• Makes more enhanced development since has so many features which JavaScript lacks

Also had one more idea,
Basically processing is a large codebase with vast community, so for different people contributing there should be a common way to start the application locally, hence I suggest to containerise the application via Docker.
Again looking forward for more input & feedback
@ksen0 @limzykenneth @lmccart @Qianqianye @outofambit @mcturner1995

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[ksen0]

Hi @NalinDalal, thanks for your ideas!

Please note that ideas for this year's GSoC, submitted by the Processing Foundation and including p5.js, can be found here: https://github.com/processing/Processing-Foundation-GSoC

The Processing Foundation is participating as a mentor org in GSoC 2025, and if it does, please feel free to develop a proposal informed by those ideas, or post questions on the related Discourse thread. There are various developer tooling and maintenance improvement ideas on the project list there that are not related to TypeScript but are much higher priority and higher potential impact in this community, and we look forward to proposals inspired by these!

If you are very interested in TypeScript specifically, please watch out for the upcoming release of 2.0 as it has some relevant issues that are currently being worked on, such as type exporting; so you're welcome to test the beta available now or watch out for the release at the end of March.

As for Docker, there was a project a few years ago: https://github.com/toolness/p5.js-docker
However, using and developing p5.js locally already works for many people, as it is intended to be very easy to get started-with. Many p5.js users use it in online editors, so may not be Docker users, but should still be able to get started with contributing. Many people are able already to start working locally without the added requirement of Docker; are there problems you've run into that require Docker? If so, we can start discussing it and then if it makes sense transfer over to another more specific issue.

[VANSH3104]

@NalinDalal, that's a great idea! Converting the code to TypeScript will enhance type safety and maintainability. Let's improve it further!

[NalinDalal]

sir @VANSH3104 please go through the convo, @ksen0 already has said that typescript can't be taken into a proposal idea. I am always open to inputs.
At last it depends on the maintainers and mentors

[limzykenneth]

We have implementation for generating typescript types for user's sketch in 2.0 and for users wanting to use typescript, that should provide relevant typings for p5.js functions.

For the library itself, it is not likely for us to transition to typescript anytime soon. There are arguments either way to be made about suitability of typescript for beginners to use, I personally lean more towards javascript with its freedom as more beginner friendly but can certainly see the opposite. The larger reason p5.js will not be using typescript at least in the near future is because p5.js is doing some really funky stuff behind the scene that typescript will never allow or require a really large amount of type wrangling to get it to compile, defeating the maintainability benefit that may come with more semantic usage of typescript.