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Discussion on: To Typescript Or Not To?

 
jackmellis profile image
Jack

I'd argue that this adds extra maintenance as you have to ensure the documentation matches up to the implementation. There's no way to enforce the two to stay in sync.

At least with something like typescript you can't change the implementation without the types being updated/corrected.

This is kind of the whole point of self-documenting code regardless of typescript. With comments you have to remember and be responsible for updating the comments whenever you change any kind of implementation detail. It'd only take a quick hotfix or two developers working on different features, and the comments can so easily become outdated.

This of course is assuming that your third party javascript libraries even bother to write jsdocs for their functions. If you use a library with no jsdocs and no ts definitions, you're forced to refer back to the actual documentation, and no dev worth their salt ever actually reads the docs right? 😂

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joelbonetr profile image
JoelBonetR 🥇

I can agree and disagree with some points. Reading the documentation makes your work more efficient and reliable. You can use multiple functions you entire life without even knowing they have optional params that can save you some good time, i've seen that many times hahaha

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agritheory profile image
Tyler Matteson

Overall this is a fascinating debate that probably doesn't have a 'right' answer but I wanted to add to this 'write docs or don't' point. Writing documentation helps me clarify that I've built what I wanted to design. Sometimes I do it first as a rubber duck exercise and I always gain something from it when I do.