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Typescript certainly is nicer than plain JavaScript, but it doesn’t come anywhere near Elm (or PureScript or GHCJS). It really is a world of difference (edit: in type safety, that is).

The reason for that is simply that TypeScript has to fit in with JavaScript, while the others do not.

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I mean, Dart offers this. The difference between Dart and the other strongly typed options is that a massive pile of funding (and production apps) drive Dart and its direction. So it’s quite stable, if a little too risk averse.

That said, I’ve never found Strong Typing to be that essential for front end dev. TypeScript is incredibly pragmatic, which is why it’s been so successful imo.

Nothing stops people from writing all their dependencies in TypeScript. But it’s not necessary to use it successfully.

What is the “this” that Dart also offers? With the languages I specifically called out, a LARGE part of them is purity, and not providing the type system escape hatches that TypeScript/Flow does, to maintain easier gradually switching a codebase. A nice thing at first, but nothing gained for new projects.

this = a sound/strong type system:

https://www.dartlang.org/guides/language/sound-dart

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