> TypeScript’s type system is purely structural and exists only at compile time. It has no way to verify that your function actually implements what its signature claims. You can declare that a function transforms a User into a SafeUser, and as long as the return object has the required fields of SafeUser, TypeScript doesn’t care what additional properties might still be lurking in there.
> This is fundamentally different from languages like Rust, where the type system can actually guarantee that if you claim to return an Option<T>, you genuinely can’t return null, the compiler enforces the contract at the language level. Rust’s type system doesn’t just trust your annotations; it verifies them.
This design where types are present at compile-time but disappear at runtime is called type erasure, and it's extremely common. For example, Java's generics are type erased. If you have some Java class Foo<T, U>, in the bytecode it will simply become Foo, and T and U will become Object. Therefore, you cannot use runtime introspection to recover their instantiations.
The remark contrasting TypeScript to Rust seems a little confused. Rust also uses type erasure; types and lifetimes are checked by the compiler, then the compiler produces a native executable, which is just machine code and would not contain type information. Option<&T> could be treated as a pointer T*, because the niche optimization ensures that the Option::None variant is represented as 0 or NULL. If C code were to interact with Rust code via FFI, it would be able to pass a value of 0. However, Rust doesn't have a null value the way that it's commonly understood in languages such as Java, C#, or JavaScript, a distinguished value that denotes a "sentinel" reference that does not refer to any object. I would say that the null reference is semantically a higher-level concept, specific to these particular programming languages.
Philosophically, the notion of type erasure goes all the way back to Curry-style (extrinsic) typing, which is contrasted with Church-style (intrinsic) typing. For example, in Curry-style typing, the program (fun x -> x) is the identity function on all types, while in Church-style typing, each type A has its own identity function, (fun (x : A) -> x) and a program is meaningless without types.
hutao•1h ago
> This is fundamentally different from languages like Rust, where the type system can actually guarantee that if you claim to return an Option<T>, you genuinely can’t return null, the compiler enforces the contract at the language level. Rust’s type system doesn’t just trust your annotations; it verifies them.
This design where types are present at compile-time but disappear at runtime is called type erasure, and it's extremely common. For example, Java's generics are type erased. If you have some Java class Foo<T, U>, in the bytecode it will simply become Foo, and T and U will become Object. Therefore, you cannot use runtime introspection to recover their instantiations.
The remark contrasting TypeScript to Rust seems a little confused. Rust also uses type erasure; types and lifetimes are checked by the compiler, then the compiler produces a native executable, which is just machine code and would not contain type information. Option<&T> could be treated as a pointer T*, because the niche optimization ensures that the Option::None variant is represented as 0 or NULL. If C code were to interact with Rust code via FFI, it would be able to pass a value of 0. However, Rust doesn't have a null value the way that it's commonly understood in languages such as Java, C#, or JavaScript, a distinguished value that denotes a "sentinel" reference that does not refer to any object. I would say that the null reference is semantically a higher-level concept, specific to these particular programming languages.
Philosophically, the notion of type erasure goes all the way back to Curry-style (extrinsic) typing, which is contrasted with Church-style (intrinsic) typing. For example, in Curry-style typing, the program (fun x -> x) is the identity function on all types, while in Church-style typing, each type A has its own identity function, (fun (x : A) -> x) and a program is meaningless without types.
Please correct me if I'm wrong or misunderstood!
catlifeonmars•5m ago