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Comment by zarzavat | Hacker News Reader

It’s an issue because node has a system of LTS releases, whereas TypeScript has quarterly updates, so the release cadence is different.

Updating node is much more fraught than updating TypeScript. For example, it may break any native code modules. That’s why users are directed to use the LTS and not the most recent release, so that there’s enough time for libraries to add support for the new version.

On the other hand, I usually adopt a new TypeScript version as soon as it comes out.

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I made it sure to decouple the transpiler from node itself, the transpiler is in a npm package called amaro, that is bundled in node. The goal is to allow user to upgrade amaro indipendently so we dont have to lock a ts version for the whole lifespan of a release

TypeScript feels "boring" enough at this point that being a few years behind isn't gonna be an issue in most cases. For teams who want to stay on the absolute latest release of TypeScript but want to be more conservative with their Node version, external compilation will remain necessary; but for someone like me, where TypeScript has been "good enough" for many years that I'm not excited by new TypeScript releases, this feature will be really nice.

("Boring" in this context is a compliment, by the way)

EDIT: Though reading other comments, it seems like you can update the typescript stripper independent of node? That makes this moot anyway

typescript is still evolving in dramatic ways. The 5.0 release has some really good improvements

But at the same time, it's good enough and has been good enough for many years. It's like how I'm sure EcmaScript 2024 contains cool new stuff, but if node only supported ES6, I would have no trouble writing ES6.

Though I'd primarily see this as a feature for the REPL or manual scripts where I'm not going to mind doing a `nvm use X`.

For production use, I'd still put my TS files through a build pipeline as normal

tangential protip: if you're using nvm to manage node versions, take a look at fnm as a superior replacement. (It can read the same .nvmrc file to switch on cd into a given dir, but it's faster and "cleaner" wrt impact on your shell.)

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