Message from JavaScript discussions
November 2017
— User experience
Either they can get a cryptic error which may not explain the type is wrong althrough it is the cause of the error, or they get a nice message clearly explaining it
— C++ is really crappy when it comes to that lol
— In C++ it will pick a "function candidate" for the argument types, so you can write 5 functions all named the same, but accepting different types, and C++ will try to use the most fitting one... If you give types which there were no functions for, you will get: [Error] no matching function for call which really uh... does not tell you what happened
— Or you even can get [Note] no known conversion for argument 1 from ...
— It is trying to do some things under the hood for you, and complains when it fails, but you still don't know that's because you passed the wrong type
— C++
— For comparison
— If you know C++, you know what those errors mean, but in JS you don't get anything nearly that helpful
— Without type checking you are reliant on some function in your code throwing a TypeError itself, which could be deep down in execution, several hundred calls into the stack... hard to debug
— With the asserts, one can find very easily that it is their fault
— With a lib/framework it just helps to reduce bored kids emailing me