Typescript?

[akdor1154]

Hey,
I'm trying to write a PR to add map support and I'm finding that there are a lot of extraneous checks in this project for whether properties exist or not, etc. It's always good to be careful with js, but I think the level you are going to here is leading to a quite difficult to read codebase.

Would you accept a PR to write this in Typescript instead of es6? I'm happy to do the work, you're already transpiling (it would replace Babel), and I think it would lead to much cleaner code (the typescript compiler is smart enough to know when certain checks are not required, so you can largely rely on build-time safety instead of the hand-written runtime checks you are using now).

I know this would be quite an invasive change, so that's why I'm checking instead of barging ahead and PR/forking. If you're unsure maybe we could chat over some IM medium?

Cheers
Jarrad

[martysweet]

Hi Jarrad,

I think implementing TypeScript is a good call, 100% agree on the readability issues.

Thanks,
Marty

[akdor1154]

Awes. I have a little time on this now so will try and get it done in the next day or two. I'll start with a verbatim translation to get it through then work on tightening it up after (much much easier to refactor with a compiler to help you). Kind of related - what's your branching strategy? Should I be PR-ing against master or release? If release, then what is the purpose of master?

[akdor1154]

aaand one more thing, can I target Node 4? or do you want to keep support for Node 0.x?

[martysweet]

@akdor1154 PRs should be against the development branch. I will update the CONTRIBUTING.md and README.md files.

I would be happy with min Node 4, looks like v0.12.x was EOL at the end of 2016. Will also update the documents regarding this.

Thanks for all your work on this, much appreciated!

[martysweet]

Released in v1.3.4