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TypeScript 7.0 : Should you upgrade?
While the Go-based compiler now offers up to 12x speed improvements, I found that my linter and tooling didn’t like it too much.
While I’ve got to terms with type-checking taking longer than actual testing in my CI pipeline, the new Go-based compiler in TypeScript 7.0 means I could almost relax and have a coffee. However, there are some caveats.
Changes Made
TypeScript 7.0 is a native implementation of the TypeScript compiler, written in Go. While this isn’t a new language, Microsoft have focused on ensuring compatibility with the previous type checker with parallelised parsing, checking and emitting. The main point of improvement is with VS Code. It now takes around 11 seconds to type-check instead of 126! Memory usage has also improved in their tests and --watch has also been rewritten.
If you’re a full stack JavaScript developer using TypeScript, React.js and a large monorepo this will be the best Trends & Updates news you’ll get this year. Unlike esbuild or swc we’re still doing full type checking.
Tooling
While the news is all positive, there is another issue. The new TypeScript 7.0 doesn’t have a stable API to work with. Tools that use TypeScript as a…
