Deno really shouldn't run TypeScript files directly. Not only is TypeScript too slow for this, it receives far too many breaking changes.
How will Deno decide when to upgrade its TypeScript compiler version? Will Deno have to have breaking changes every three months or so?
Also, Deno appears to allow import TypeScript files with .ts extensions while tsc doesn't. This alone means the same code won't run in Deno and compile with tsc.
JavaScript at Stage 3 and above is a stable compile target, and Deno should just run that.
I would rather have Clojurescript than Typescript, but absolutely, less is more, and it feels like a bad idea to tie implementation of this runtime to another dependency.
My love of the C++, Java, C#, ad nauseum, lineage of Enterprisey OOP languages turned to hate about 15 years ago, though, so take my assessment with a grain of salt.
“C with classes” seemed like a good idea, we were told back in the 80s in school, since garbage collection is impractical. Er, yeah. Worse is better...
I’m a huge TS fan and I agree. Deno is just running tsc for me it seems. So far I don’t see much advantage. It also potentially ties Deno to current trends. TS is pretty dang popular, but what if something else comes along and scoops it?
Note that Deno started out as Typescript runtime, it was it's tagline, they added the JavaScript later there.
> TS is pretty dang popular, but what if something else comes along and scoops it?
Earth is rather small, type inferencing dynamic language is really hard. There is simply no other language or team that has achived anything like TS. It's very unlikely that anyone else will do it for JS again. You can just look at amount of work in TS already.
Only thing that can "scoop it" is another language entirely taking off and leaving JS developers in the history. In that case the point becomes useless, it can happen to any runtime for any given language.
I read in a comment somewhere else in this post that you can just point deno at JS files to skip the TS compiler. I agree it's probably not a good idea to couple the Typescript version with the runner.
It's just compiling TypeScript into JS when you import it, and uses tsc to do it. It can load JS just fine as well if you want to use Babel or similar.
My workaround is to use //@ts-ignore above the import, but this is clunky. I just tried Deno and found that TypeScript doesn't support .ts extensions yet.
How will Deno decide when to upgrade its TypeScript compiler version? Will Deno have to have breaking changes every three months or so?
Also, Deno appears to allow import TypeScript files with .ts extensions while tsc doesn't. This alone means the same code won't run in Deno and compile with tsc.
JavaScript at Stage 3 and above is a stable compile target, and Deno should just run that.