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TypeScript's Quiet, Steady Rise Among Programming Languages (wired.com)

Posted by msmash on from the moving-trends dept.

Microsoft's programming language TypeScript has become one of the most popular languages among developers, at least according to a report published by the analyst firm RedMonk this week. Wired: TypeScript jumped from number 16 to number 12, just behind Apple's programming language Swift in RedMonk's semiannual rankings, which were last published in August. Microsoft unveiled TypeScript in 2012, and while it hasn't grown as quickly as Swift -- which has grown faster than any other language, ever since RedMonk started compiling the rankings in 2011 -- TypeScript's own ascendance is impressive, given the sheer number of available programming languages.

More and more applications these days use TypeScript. Google's programming framework Angular, the second most popular tool of its type according to data released last year by the startup NPM, is written in TypeScript. So is Vue, an increasingly popular framework finding a home both among smaller companies and tech giants like Alibaba. But RedMonk doesn't look at how many jobs are available for people skilled in a particular language, nor how many companies actually use the language. Instead, the firm tries to spot trends in developer interest by looking at how many projects on GitHub use certain languages, and how many questions are asked about those languages on the programmer Q&A site Stack Overflow. The idea is to get a sense of where the software development profession is heading.

17 of 138 comments (clear)

  1. Typescript has restored my job satisfaction by sobachatina · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I moved from C++ to javascript as part of a very advantageous job change.

    Unfortunately javascript shortly made me loathe coming to work.

    We ported all our code to TypeScript and I get to feel like a real programmer again.
    Strict typing is a beautiful thing. Refactoring and compile time bugs instead of runtime disasters.

    1. Re:Typescript has restored my job satisfaction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Amen.

      Right now I am programming in Python and, coming from a Java and C background... all I can say is that Python is the new Perl.
      You have to be a certain age to really get that comment.

      Types, do you UNDERSTAND them, motherfucker!

      Javascript is a disaster like all weakly typed languages, but Typescript is a miracle that may rescue web development. Absolutely beautiful work, brought to you by Anders Hejlsberg, the man who also created Turbo Pascal, Delphi, and Objective C. In other words, a man who has experience and proven results creating practical and elegant languages. Not made by some guy over a weekend.

    2. Re:Typescript has restored my job satisfaction by lgw · · Score: 4, Insightful

      var intX = 0
      var strY = ""

      Sure, and everyone can have their own syntax for this, and not have their IDE warn them when they forget. Or, you know, it can be part of the language, making it a standard for all, including the IDE, and removing the need for the Hungarian notation clutter everywhere.

      In terms of compile time bugs, vs run time disasters, there a numerous tools that will validate your code.

      Yes, and a popular one is Typescript.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    3. Re:Typescript has restored my job satisfaction by PPH · · Score: 5, Funny

      there a numerous tools that will validate your code

      Stop calling our users tools.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    4. Re:Typescript has restored my job satisfaction by raftpeople · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Python is a strongly typed language, so yes, it understands types just like Java. Maybe you are really referring to dynamic vs static?

    5. Re:Typescript has restored my job satisfaction by ceoyoyo · · Score: 2

      That would be fine, if JavaScript were *used* as a scripting language. Back in the old days, when you just wanted to make a button on your web page change colours or something, cool.

      Problem is, Javascript today is used as a programming language, to write real (sizeable) programs that incorporate a decent amount of their own logic.

    6. Re: Typescript has restored my job satisfaction by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 2

      Keep telling yourself that a language that lets you pass literally anything into a method and also lets you return literally anything is strongly typed.

      Python knows exactly what types you're passing. Python is a strongly typed language, unlike, for example, C. If you pass "NULL" to a C function that expects a buffer, you're likely to get a runtime crash and/or security exploit. If you pass "None" to a similar Python routine, the Python interpreter will throw an appropriate exception instead.

      Language typing has two different orthogonal concepts: strong vs. weak, and static vs dynamic. Dynamic/static determines whether variables are supposed to hold a certain type, and strong/weak determines whether the language itself knows (or ensures) what type any given value has. C has static, and rather weak typing; Python has dynamic, strong typing. Other examples of different combinations are Rust, with static, strong typing, and Forth, with dynamic, weak typing.

      BTW, if you feel that you are unable to master the expressiveness that comes with Python's dynamic typing, you can run pylint to get compiler-like type handholding.

    7. Re: Typescript has restored my job satisfaction by phantomfive · · Score: 2

      Python knows exactly what types you're passing. Python is a strongly typed language, unlike, for example, C. If you pass "NULL" to a C function that expects a buffer, you're likely to get a runtime crash and/or security exploit. If you pass "None" to a similar Python routine, the Python interpreter will throw an appropriate exception instead.

      This is sophistry attempting to cover up the weakness of the Python type system. And by weakness, I mean the lousiness of it. English polymorphism, fuckers.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  2. Re:Wait a minute... by sobachatina · · Score: 5, Informative

    Typescript is basically JavaScript syntax with some extra type information tacked on. It runs through a compiler that produces javascript.

    I'm a fan. If you do anything even moderately complex in JavaScript you should look at Typescript. It eases a lot of the pain of using JavaScript.

  3. Misleading article by idontusenumbers · · Score: 2

    I suspect the main reason they measure github projects and stackoverflow questions isn't because they think those are good ways to measure, it's because it's the only publicly available information they have access to.

    Swift's rise in popularity isn't due to Swift being a good language, it's due to 1) Apple killing ObjectiveC 2) ObjectiveC being so backwards

  4. Re:Wait a minute... by AlanObject · · Score: 2

    I'm a fan. If you do anything even moderately complex in JavaScript you should look at Typescript. It eases a lot of the pain of using JavaScript.

    Count me in as a fan as well.

    I never really cared for programming in JavaScript myself although I did it because that was the job at hand.

    Then I started learning Angular, and learned Typescript by following the Angular lessons. Rarely did I have to go back to the Typescript reference page. And predictably enough my JavaScript skills improved because I was writing more of it to integrate JavaScript libraries into my Angular applications.

    What I learned really was that strong type checking is really really helpful when dealing with a lot of interfaces. The IDE (I use WebStorm) auto-completion and parameter/type checking in enormously more efficient than having to continually go back to documentation (or the original source code) for what you can't remember.

    At the same time they didn't give up the option of weak type checking for when that is a better way to write things. Win-win.

  5. TypeScript is still crap by djbckr · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Lately our team has moved to TypeScript from Java to write server-side services. Now, Java is not the best thing in the world admittedly, but it's head and shoulders better than JavaScript. I think typescript is just a hack to make javascript a bit more palatable than straight JS. I think of "lipstick on a pig", but really typescript is just a really bad makeup job on a dead rotten pig.

    1. Re:TypeScript is still crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The real failure here is a scripting language designed for web browsers being used for back end services. DON'T DO STUPID SHIT!

      If you want to use a scripting language on the back end, that's fine, but use a scripting language designed for back end work.

      TypeScript is imperfect, but leaps and bounds ahead of plain of JavaScript for front end work

  6. Re:Wait a minute... by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 2

    > It eases a lot of the pain of using JavaScript.

    How is debugging TypeScript? Do you have to wade through obfuscated JavaScript?

  7. Re:Wait a minute... by Wrath0fb0b · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Because it was easier to write a sane language and a transpiler than it is to fix the recursive dumpster fire that is JavaScript.

    That should really tell us something folks.

  8. Re: Wait a minute... by pchasco · · Score: 3, Interesting

    No. The typescript compiler generates map files for your .ts, so you debug typescript not JavaScript.

  9. 20 years in the making.. by AndrewFlagg · · Score: 2

    @Microsoft @JavaScriptDaily been programming in Javascript for 20 years and they finally come up with TypeScript -- of all things... when I was at Microsoft I told them that back in 1995-1997, they finally agreed in 2017... https://twitter.com/Reno89512/...