I learned that lesson with CoffeeScript ;) The bulk of the advantage you have with TypeScript can be had with type definitions and an editor with language intelligence. Is the rest worth adding a build step if you don’t already have one (as I do not with NodeKit)? Hell no :)

Intelligence doesn't provide you with proofs of good working of all program. Big advantage of TS is type checking of code and not hinting...

@datatitian

Neither does static type checking. It only proves one aspect: that the types are what you expect. And, again, that’s what you get if you write JavaScript and have type information available. What you don’t get is a nanny that knows what’s best and gets in the way of you using a dynamic language expressively. The loops I’ve seen people having to jump just to make TypeScript happy… Heck, why not go whole hog and just use Java if you need to put your devs in straightjackets :)

You meant ActionScript instead of Java which also had explicit types I guess?..

And yeah I does type checking of whole project while in IDE you usually only know what's on your screen or opened files.

Expressive dynamic language is good for small projects but this changes when your project grows and you want another 4 people to work on it along with you. Now there might be files you'll open presumably in next year or might not at all. And now comes CI, declarations and many things in which plain JS just sucks.

Type checks is a must have for large projects.

@datatitian

Nope, I meant Java. ActionsScript was ECMAScript and dynamic just like JS.

And if a team of five developers cannot build maintainable software using JavaScript, I’d say there’s something else very wrong there and lack of static typing is the least of your worries.