Yup. The libraries underneath will still allow nonsense at runtime, though, and it will now be harder to see, so it’s a partial solution as done in standard practice.
An all-TypeScript stack, if you could pull it off, would be the way to go.
Most libraries have TypeScript types these days, either bundled directly with the library (common with newer libraries), or as part of the DefinitelyTyped project.
DefinitelyTyped is the exact kind of thing I’m talking about. You put TypeScript definitions over things, but under the hood it’s still JavaScript and can fail in JavaScript ways.
If there was an easy way to use rust or something on webassemly and use that instead of JS. I’d be so happy, but I can’t find how to do it without npm.
We use this framework at work: https://leptos.dev
Rust would probably be the wrong tool here. This is scripting, so pointers like Rust is built around aren’t really meaningful. Kotlin or Python or something are more on the ticket.
You can use WebAssembly today, but you still need some JS interop for a bunch of browser features (like DOM manipulation). Your core logic can be in WebAssembly though. C# has Blazor, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some Rust WebAssembly projects. I seem to recall that there’s a reimplementation of Flash player that’s built in Rust and compiles to WebAssembly.
Yeah, ideally TypeScript would be natively supported. Or maybe just Python, which is sort-of strictly typed, and definitely won’t do “wat”. Alas, it’s not the world we live in, and browsers take JavaScript.
The libraries underneath will still allow nonsense at runtime
Only if you use a badly written library. Most libraries have types provided by DefinitelyTyped. Those who don’t are (in my experience) so tiny that you probably aren’t using them; or, if you really wanted, can check yourself.
In the end, if you encounter a bug, it’ still 99% of the time not a library’s fault, even if it’s written in plain JS.
Like I said to the other person, those are just types over top of JavaScript that can still fail if/when coercion happens under the hood.
I don’t even know how to search it now, but a specific example came up on here of a time when JavaScript libraries will cause problems, and problems you can’t even see very well if you’re expecting it to act strictly-typed.
