In my recent research in static site frameworks (for Node, Bun, Deno), I noticed something very peculiar: while frameworks and also the wider ecosystem is often adamant that you can choose between JavaScript and TypeScript, there is often a community vibe that implicitly defines TypeScript as the default option and you’d be bonkers to go with anything else. It sometimes even manifests that some feature is basically TypeScript only, because you can’t do anything without static typing it seems.
It may not be the intention of these communities, but if I want to just a little project with plain modern JavaScript, it can quickly feel that I’m not doing it right, which is a shame. Virtually every JavaScript project that hasn’t succumbed to the TypeScript mafia, has some drive-by issue on Github, demanding TypeScript support or else! If the majority of a community wants their technology only be used in “serious” projects (whatever that means), which obviously is only possible with TypeScript, don’t say you support JavaScript. It’s dishonest.
I’m not naming names, because I have seen the backlash that some projects have faced when they announced to ditch TypeScript. It feels similar to the abuse I got as a Python developer 15 years ago by the Enterprise Java clique, so at this point I’m mostly ditching TypeScript for the user community, not the technology.