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Understanding TypeScript's Structural Type System

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Strange Loop
|
September 1, 2018
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Strange Loop
|
September 2018

I was wrong. I thought TypeScript was something like a Java-ey type system layered atop JavaScript, bringing a dose of brittleness and losing the flexibility I appreciated about the warty-yet-ubiquitous multi-paradigm language.

But that's not it at all! TypeScript radically improves the JavaScript development experience by providing a flexible, light-weight type system for modern EcmaScript. It does so while maintaining a delicate balance: adding a way to enforce assumptions and invariants without removing the flexibility prized by dynamic language developers. This works because TypeScript's type system is structural and not nominal - that is, based on shapes of data instead of identities of types.