Hey folks! A couple of days ago, I wrote an article about ts-pattern, sharing how cool it was to discover this library. I got some great feedback from people who appreciated what I shared. But, of course, there were also some comments criticizing my approach, arguing that I should just stick to basic switch statements or object literals. They mentioned that I shouldn’t add another library that would increase the bundle size.
Come on, guys. Can’t I write an article about something I found fun and wanted to share? You can use this library if you want—I’m not saying it’s the best or that everyone should use it. I’m simply sharing how cool and readable I found it for my use case. I’m not trying to launch a rocket here or explain compiler optimizations to a new developer.
It’s becoming tiresome to engage with developers who think they know everything and dismiss anything that doesn’t align with their rigid principles. Sharing something I find interesting and enjoyable shouldn’t be a battleground for those who love nitpicking. And when I read comments like “If this happened at my company, I’d block the PR,” I just think—what the hell, dude? It’s just my personal opinion about something fun, not a performance-critical decision that will destroy your project.
Let’s be real: no project is perfect, and most have code smells like any other. So far, this is just a rant, but it won’t stop me from sharing things I find cool. See you guys online.
for someone that want to read here is the ts-pattern article: Article
Top comments (13)
I think ts-pattern is a pretty interesting library. Would it be better if js had this as a language feature? Definitely. Would it be better if you instead use some verbose js to do this? Not always. It depends on what you value in your code. If you value terseness of DSLs and having code be easier to read in abstraction, use ts-pattern. If you value simplicity in your code and want a low barier for entry to the codebase, it makes sense to minimize abstractions like this. It's a tradeoff like any other so it should be treated as such.
I understand the "If this happened at my company, I’d block the PR," comment since I'd probably do the same but not before trying to understand why the other developer wants to introduce this and if they have assessed how this affects the consistency of the codebase and how that can be worked on. PR reviews should not be a dictatorship of one dude's opinions.
It is pretty problematic when people push something thats subjective onto others especially in a field that should be more creative than just being another "mindlessly get shit done" job.
Please keep sharing things you find interesting! That's how the dev community has always worked.
I understand your sentiment - but then I read your post (I like it!) and I also browsed the comments, and hey, most of it isn't that negative at all, people are just discussing, they aren't burning you to the ground or something, none of it is "ad hominem" ...
I mean, the tone was pretty mild and polite generally IMO - maybe you should try to grow a little bit of a thicker skin? ;-) I think it would be way worse if nobody was commenting on your article !
P.S. if people DO launch "ad hominem" attacks or are ridiculing something, I'll be the first to agree that that's in very poor taste, but generally that's not what I saw in the comments ...
I read some of the comments but didn't want to reply as it feeds into "negative comments cycling" for no real reason.
That said, I do felt like the post+comments essentially formed some indirect: "Cunningham's Law".
Interestingly, engagement is engagement, finding traction at all is somewhat what everyone who posts seeks at some level, even if it feels/is negative.
Who knows, find another "controversial library" and double down to drag those who posted against ts-pattern. Or build on top of ts-pattern even more lol.
Hey buddy your comment makes totally sense, thanks for took a time to read both ❤️
I'm pretty sure some people who have nightmares about bundle size have never seen a bundle size problem...
Keep writing man!
I question having bundles at all :-)
No, seriously, I got tired trying to advocate page size, loading speed, web performance, energy efficiency optimization etc., as it seems that many developers just don't want to get it and rather work in feature factories working as if they were paid by lines of code. Another aspect of DEV discussions has become the abundance of new posts trying to advertise tools that "every developer must use", often with low-quality AI-generated content to cover up creating backlinks for their companies' products. So I think it's understandable when some people have become quite critical and negative when they see new tools and libraries.
But, as others already said, that's part of the discussion, and it should not stop you to share your code and projects! So thanks for both posts, ts-pattern, as well as this honest opinion!
My problem with your conclusion is that this is not a thing that "people have become", but a thing that "people always acted like that", the programming field is completely and absolutely filled with people that have extremely large egos and a complete incapacity to look at something different than they are used to without puking hard. Obviously I'm not talking about all programmers, not even a notion of majority, but I do think those are the most louders (as in any field, the most prepotent ones also tend to be the louder ones).
Thank you so much for ur comment
Dude, you wrote about X and people were discussing about X. They weren't offending you, your article or anything. At best one guy criticized your examples. They were simply sharing their opinion.
No, they were not discussing it, they were quite rudely stating it should not exist and not be used. This can be done in a nicer way, but alas, they did not. The tone was very negative and boring, and, for an article that was human written and not crap, it surprised me. I am negative when people post AI-generated crap, but this wasn't.
It also seems like the people commenting have never used a language with pattern matching to be honest, since they just called it a fancier switch statement...
yeah .. it was feeling frustrated about the comments, no where i was saying that is the best solution for something .. but yeah thanks for the comment :D
I'm not saying they offended me, just was trying to explain that i was talking about how X could be cool and make your readability nice, they were talking about X as performance optimization, bundle size issues, adding more complex examples ... that was not the intention of the article
Now this sounds like an intersting topic @tauantcamargo : )