
Should Flow and TypeScript combine forces? - StokeMasterJack
Do the benefits of whatever differentiates Flow from TypeScript outweigh the downsides of having two competing standards for typed JavaScript?
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smt88
What are the downsides of competing standards?

The TS community is far, far larger and more active than Flow, and I'm not
sure eliminating Flow would make much difference. Facebook would certainly
continue to use it instead of porting all their code to TypeScript.

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RodTiller
The downside is for React developers. I am a React developer. I would like to
benefit from the larger ecosystem of TypeScript: better availability of type
defs, better editor support, more help on stackoverflow, etc.

But there are also benefits (for a React developer) of using Flow. For one,
create-react-app has built-in support for Flow but not TypeScript.

The answer to your question "What are the downsides of competing standards?".
For the same reason we try to standardize on other aspects of the JavaScript
language and ecosystem when new things are added. Having 3 different ways to
do promises would be a pain, so the community created a single standard way to
do it.

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smt88
> _create-react-app has built-in support for Flow but not TypeScript_

This is no longer a downside, as of a few days ago:
[https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript-React-
Starter](https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript-React-Starter)

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maxcaber
Great post! My hope is (ES7) => TypeScript.getBestOf() + Flow.getBestOf()

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RodTiller
No. IMO.

