Official TypeScript compiler coming to Meteor

[storyteller]

For anyone interested here are the slides from @benjamn presentation about TS in Meteor from Meteor Night:

[pmogollon]

I thinks this is awesome, and as is stated in the deck, is a huge opportunity for us, the community, to get our hands dirty and understand how Meteor build system actually work so that we are able to continue contributing.

Im all in!

[afrokick]

waiting for a video too)

[robfallows]

I’m really excited about bringing TypeScript to Meteor, but no-one’s mentioned this slide:

• Meteor’s data system should be database-independent, rather than tightly coupled to Mongo

• Making everything reactive and real-time by default is great for rapid prototyping, but also a source of scaling problems for Meteor applications

• If Meteor becomes more agnostic about the sources of your data, we can’t keep calling its client-side query language “Minimongo”

• As a company, we should get out of the business of shipping monolithic all-or-nothing frameworks

nor the homage to next.js.

IMO, both those slides seem to provide an insight into @benjamn’s thinking of the direction(s) Meteor should develop in. On the one hand remove tight MongoDB coupling and (seemingly) provide better integration with Apollo: by extension a more attractive path into wider adoption of Meteor. On the other, more of the “expected” functionality of a JS/TS development platform - again providing a more attractive developer offering. These would be huge changes.

Ben also mentions Meteor’s commitment to backwards compatibility and its (possibly over-zealous) zero-config approach. Now, I love those aspects of Meteor, together with its rapid prototyping, but I’m doubtful that all the potential changes on the table would be compatible. Perhaps, we’re looking at a future Meteor 2 and the clearest signal of all that Meteor is still the right tool to run with.

[hluz]

Just hope that any Meteor Apollo client integration plays well with frameworks other than React (thinking about Vue here)…

[trusktr]

It should. Apollo isn’t tied to any view layer. Those are separate things. There may be a small glue code for each view library, to make it easier to hook them into Apollo reactivity; a simple HoC for React, for Vue, for Angular, etc.

Even without glue code, it’ll be simple enough to listen to changes in a GraphQL query, then manually call setState or forceUpdate on your React component to tell it when to update. That’s basically all the glue code will do.

[kschingiz]

Finally really good news from MDG! Really waiting for it.

[robfallows]

If you’re interested in following @benjamn’s typescript work, you’ll find it merged into 1.8.2.

Update. It’s now in the1.8.2-beta.16 release, so we can get to play with it

[jabid]

Great…

It’s a small step for Ben a big step for Meteor’s Community

[robfallows]

Very topical

[alan99]

Are there any stats on how many devs know TypeScript vs. vanilla JS?

[storyteller]

That is quiet hard to say. If we look at the relevant state of JS result for 2018 that 46% of js devs use it with another 33% looking to give it a try soon.

[alan99]

That is not quite what the survey reports:

• 33% Heard of it, would like to learn (!== “…try soon”)
• 46% Used it, would use again (!== “use it”)

But ok, 46% of responding devs know TS – fine. Given the selection bias of the survey, I’d bet on 10% or so, in the real world. See Who Took the State of JavaScript 2018 Survey?

(Also, given the many esoteric features of TS, “to know TS” is not well-defined. 1% might also be a valid answer.)

Oh well – it’s clear there isn’t much interest in this point.
// end of lament

[theara]

I am a newbie for Typescript.
I tired with Meteor-1.8.2.x.
I worked, but don’t bug error when I assign difference data type in function

// Method (ts)
Meteor.methods({
  hello(
    name: string,
    gender: string = "M",
    age: number,
    address?: string
  ): string {
    console.log(name, gender, age, address);
    return name;
  }
});
------------- 
// Client call

    Meteor.call("hello", "Rabbit", "M", "5 year", "BTB", (err, res) => {
      console.log(res);
    });

It still work … (age: number???)
Please help me…

[theara]

Could share me the Example Application?

[waldgeist]

I doubt this can work, because Meteor methods are not regular method calls, they work like remote procedure calls. In this case, you have to check the validity of the parameters with other means, e.g. using the check package.

[theara]

@waldgeist, very thanks.
Have any example Meteo1.8.2 + Typescript?

[waldgeist]

It is documented here:
https://docs.meteor.com/api/check.html

This will not enable TypeScript checkings, though, because Meteor methods are different from regular functions.

[theara]

I would like to need Meteo1.8.2 + Typescript Example OR Document?

[coagmano]

Method typings should work if you use mdg:validated-method for your method definitions