TypeScript and how I've learned to love the compiler
summary
Slack’s desktop codebase moves from plain JS to TypeScript with the TSC compiler and the TypeScript language server, converting roughly 10,000 JavaScript files and finishing organically in about half a year. The compiler finds subtle bugs (misspelled methods, wrong promise shapes) before runtime, preserves plain JS output with no runtime overhead, improves editor autocomplete and npm interop, and reduces crashes when interfacing with native C++. Tradeoff: stronger typing speeds confidence but increases onboarding cost for untyped JavaScript hires.
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