My first introduction to TypeScript was trying to use it to solve Advent of Code.

I wrote some code that iterated over lines in a file or something and passed them to a function that took an argument with a numeric type.

I thought this would be a great test to show the benefits of TypeScript over plain JavaScript: either it would fail to compile, or the strings would become numbers.

What actually happened was it compiled perfectly fine, but the "numeric" input to my function contained a string!

I found that to be a gross violation of trust and have never recovered from it.

EDIT: See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46021640 for examples.

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macguillicuddy 14 minutes ago | parent [-]

No tool is perfect. What matters is if a tool is useful. I've found TypeScript to be incredibly useful. Is it possible to construct code that leads to runtime type errors? Yes. Does it go a long way towards reducing runtime type errors? Also yes.

	▲	swiftcoder a few seconds ago \| parent [-]
		> No tool is perfect. What matters is if a tool is useful Some tools are more perfect and more useful than others. Typescript's type system is very powerful, but without strict compile-time enforcement you still spend a lot of effort on validating runtime weirdness (that the compiler ought to be able to enforce).