A pleasant experience report on just-in-time TypeScript
I just removed
ts-node
after about two years of service in my personal codebase. This
is an experience report on its usage.
Overall I enjoyed using ts-node and was never burnt
by it, which is really saying something because I tend to push
these things to their limits.
There were minor hiccups like ts-node,
package-installed TypeScript, and VSCode TypeScript brawling it
out in my editor. Types would work in some subset. But this
issue was fleeting. By the time I had ripped
ts-node out there was only one artifact of it
having lost one of these type battles.
When I was first getting into TypeScript coming from a heavy
JavaScript background, it was a quick way to jump in and not
have to worry about compiled code. I'm glad it existed to get me
over the hump of adopting TypeScript. If this was its purpose,
ts-node served it for sure.
Ultimately, the decision to abandon ts-node was
performance related. I lean into code-generation heavily and a
major pitfall of doing so is the time spent on the code-gen.
Removing ts-node from the process removed 50% of
the time spent generating code. This was an optimization I
couldn't overlook.
Fortunately, ts-node had not leached too deeply
into my codebase because I only deploy compiled JavaScript to my
back-end servers. So all production code was living
ts-node-free. I just needed to change up the
dev-local experience.
I was happy with ts-node as I used it and am happy
with it as we parted. It took less then a few hours to have it
fully ripped out.
I'll miss you ts-node, thanks for all the training
wheels!