TypeScript, that's the differentiator. Having fully typed variables in the templates cannot be replicated in templating languages (well technically they might be able to but that's not as ergonomic as fact).

Talk about sledgehammer to crack a nut - honestly, why does anyone need type safety in a simple templating operation? Dynamic languages have their uses, you know. Type safety is a tool, not an ideology.

because it's nice to know whether that `post` variable contains a property `createdAt` or `published` At without leaving the template. Arguing "I don't use it why should you" is unproductive.

Agreed, you get all the benefits of type inference even in a template. It's a pain to debug template variables that don't exist, I've written enough Handlebars to know.

I basically never use dynamic languages anymore. If there aren't algebraic data types in a language I simply don't use it. Sometimes people think I'm exaggerating but it's truly great to use a language with ADTs that you get spoiled.

So what do you use for shell scripting?

I like using Nim or Rust, or TypeScript, depends on the script. If it's just a few lines, sure I'll write it in bash, but if it gets a little larger, I convert it into a real programming language.

Rust as a replacement for a bash script?

My bash scripts are often edited, I could not imagine using a compiled language where I would have to store the source as a separate file from the executable, then compile it each time.

I'd love to know your more specific use cases, if you don't mind. I'm always happy to learn something new. Could you share some Rust that most people would script in Bash as an example? What's your build and deploy (to ~/.local/bin I presume) strategy?

> where I would have to store the source as a separate file from the executable, then compile it each time

> What's your build and deploy (to ~/.local/bin I presume) strategy?

You can run scripts as you would with bash, you don't have to manually build and run the executable. For example, `cargo run (inside the script source folder)` and `sh script.sh` do basically the same thing, end user wise. `nim compile --run script.nim` is similar in that the language compiler will automatically compile and run it together.

> Could you share some Rust that most people would script in Bash as an example?

I was creating dotfiles the other day and I didn't want to use some dotfile manager program as I had some specific steps I wanted to follow, so I started it as a bash script. Well, it got kind of annoying so I made it into a Rust script with some nice features like interactive prompts, text coloring, etc with libraries like `clap`. You can do this in bash of course, but the Rust version was more ergonomic. When I need to run the script, I just did `cargo run` and it worked great.

I see, but then your scripts are not nice compact commands.

For instance, my most-used bash script takes a file as input and opens either VIM or Emacs depending on whether the file is a .md or .org (simplified example). I run it like so:

  $ n foo.org

I can edit ~/.local/bin/n and update the file, and use it immediately. I actually have my whole ~/.local/bin in version control. Having to type out e.g.

  $ nim compile --run n foo.org

...would make the whole experience far less fluent. I probably would never use it.

I'm asking because I'd love to rewrite this script in e.g. Rust, but I don't see any good way to deploy it to ~/.local/bin/n.

For nim, you could use something like nimcr (https://nimble.directory/pkg/nimcr). You put a shebang in your script `#!/usr/bin/env nimcr` and then call it like a normal script.

eg:

  $ code script.nim


  #!/usr/bin/env nimcr
  echo "hello world"


  $ ./script.nim
  hello world

edit:

There's also the possibility of using nimscript, using nim e. It works similarly but you'd change the shebang line to something like

  #!/usr/bin/env nim e --hints:off

Actually another way to do nimscript is to make a config.nims file with tasks in it. eg:

In config.nims:

  switch("hints", "off")
  task hello, "say hello world":
    echo "hello world"

In bash:

  $ nim hello
  hello world

Just alias the command in your .bashrc? e.g. `alias n="nim compile --run n"`. I'm not sure what the issue is with longer commands because the benefits of writing in a strongly statically typed language definitely outweigh a few extra characters to type, which you don't even need to do with aliases.

For what it's worth, you need only type "nim r n". If "n.nim" is marked executable and begins with "#!/usr/bin/nim r" then you also need only type "n.nim".

But TypeScript doesn’t have ADTs which you stated was a hard requirement. It has some other features that can achieve similar things though, so maybe that’s good enough?

Kinda nitpicky. Sure ADTs are a pattern in Typescript rather than a first-class entity, but they're an extremely well-supported pattern, exhaustiveness checking and all.

    type ADT = 
        | { case : 'a', a : Number }
        | { case : 'b', b : string }

    function f (c : ADT) {
        switch(c.case) {
            case 'a' : return c.a
            case 'b' : return Number.parseInt(c.b)

            // case 'c' : return 0 // compile error

            // case 'b' : return c.a // also compile error
        }
    }

Discriminated unions aren't quite as nice, but they're pretty close.

For sure. I'm a big fan of type safety in larger codebases with reasonably stable domains. But when a project's small or new enough to be relatively volatile, the overhead just isn't worth it for me.

There are "templating languages" such as SGML for generating type-checked markup ie. respecting the regular content model and lexical types expressed in DTDs and other markup declarations. This results in injection-free, HTML-aware templating ie. templating engines can properly quote/escape content in attributes, CDATA sections, etc. and can enforce content model rules (that eg lists consist of nothing but list items, that script elements aren't placed where forbidden as would be required in user content such as comments provided by your web site visitors, etc.) Much more powerful than programming language types, and needed in CMSs.