NSnslog·Mar 21, 2023Submission
RFC: Amplify JavaScript TypeScript Improvements
1 points · Open discussionaws-amplify
amplify-js
TypeScript2017–2023
aws-amplify / amplify-js
amplify-js
A declarative JavaScript library for application development using cloud services.
12Distinct people
13Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
9.6KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
A declarative JavaScript library for application development using cloud services.
GitHub
Where it is used
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year13 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2017-11-18 05:35:08 UTC to 2023-03-21 23:23:11 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 1 | 5 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
What Hacker News says
13 sourcesI think TS's typesystem still stays stronger than Scala's in some areas (and vice versa). But I believe the links you posted (like https://github.com/aws-amplify/amplify-js/blob/dedd5641dfcfc...) can now done in Scala 3, mostly to the introduction of match types.
In general, Scala focusses a bit more on theoretical foundation and sound features (which makes progress slower), whereas TS focusses more on practicality. That's pretty exciting because it also means that TS leads to more "experimentation" and if something works out well (and can be proven to scale into the future and interops well with other features) then it can be added to Scala in a more general/abstract way - which also makes it easier for other languages (like Java) to pick it up.
In Scala 3.0As someone who has spent a lot of time diving deep into Scala (I worked on compiler related semantic tooling for scalameta, worked on a experimental parallelizable Scala compiler, and even have a single commit in this release from almost four years ago LOL), and who more recently has been working with TypeScript, I find this really interesting and agree in some ways.
Scala 2.x already had path-dependent types, which combined with implicits and type inference were technically sufficient to implement versions of of the dependent function types we have now in 3.x. In my opinion, how you did this previously could get really clunky (See e.g. hlist mapping in https://github.com/milessabin/shapeless/blob/8933ddb7af63b8b...). Lots of things that frankly felt like casting magic spells, and there were sometimes fragile and weird bugs especially wit
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h how implicits were resolved, see e.g. https://github.com/scala/scala/pull/6139.
The native type-level meta-programming coming in 3.x along with a lot of streamlining of the underlying type system and implicit resolution rules (e.g. https://github.com/lampepfl/dotty/pull/5925) could help a lot.
This is just one example of a more advanced feature, but there are lots of things like this that changed in Dotty (maybe the most interesting is the DOT calculus that makes a better backbone for the type system). I don't know what tooling for Scala 3.x looks like, but even Intellij's frankly amazing Scala plugin broke down sometimes for 2.x.
After using TypeScript, I just personally enjoyed the experience better. Technically Typescript's type system is equally as powerful as Scala's, but the primitives for expressing more complicated types just seem much easier compared to the path-dependent stuff you would need to do in Scala.
I was amazed to find stuff like this https://github.com/aws-amplify/amplify-js/blob/dedd5641dfcfc... in mainstream wide usage. I'm not even sure how you could write these type of transformations as well in any version of Scala. I suppose maybe records work, or in this specific case there are functional patterns that are preferred.
Caveat, I haven't followed Dotty for a couple years now, so I could be missing a lot. Regardless, I have really enjoyed the tooling around Typescript as well as the design. The real-world usage of more complicated dependent types (and there are good uses IMO) have been more fluent and easier to understand, and less dependent on tricky behavior like for implicits.
VS Code's tools are really magical, and I hope with some of the amazing underlying work done in Dotty the Scala developer experience could look more like that.
Amplify stores Cognito tokens in localstorage
2 points · Open discussionI've worked with Cognito extensively, and it's effectively abandoned. This issue sums up some of the common frustrations https://github.com/aws-amplify/amplify-js/issues/3495
In AWS CloudShellWith regards to Cognito, I'd recommend reading through this GitHub issue before committing to it:
https://github.com/aws-amplify/amplify-js/issues/3495
While I haven't personally had the opportunity to run into these issues, the feedback there shows a serious lack of ownership that I've never encountered elsewhere with AWS.
In AWS services to avoidCognito as the Worse AWS Product?
2 points · Open discussionThis may help a little bit: https://github.com/aws/aws-amplify/issues/19
In AWS Amplify: JavaScript Open Source Library with React, React Native ExtensionsHi, this has been updated and the new size is 524KB which you can see here: https://github.com/aws/aws-amplify/tree/master/packages/aws-... and https://www.npmjs.com/package/aws-amplify
In AWS Amplify: JavaScript Open Source Library with React, React Native ExtensionsUnsure I'd agree. It looks like Amplify is providing you with all the components you need to build on top of all AWS cloud services.
I particularly like their approach which makes it easy to use AWS but the ability to move away from AWS should you want to.
"AWS Amplify is a JavaScript library for frontend and mobile developers building cloud-enabled applications. The library is a declarative interface across different categories of operations in order to make common tasks easier to add into your application. The default implementation works with Amazon Web Services (AWS) resources but is designed to be open and pluggable for usage with other cloud services that wish to provide an implementation or custom backends."
https://github.com/aws/aws-amplify
In AWS Amplify: JavaScript Open Source Library with React, React Native ExtensionsI'm not sure this is ready for prime time:
1.54MB - https://github.com/aws/aws-amplify/blob/master/packages/aws-...
In AWS Amplify: JavaScript Open Source Library with React, React Native Extensionshttps://github.com/aws/aws-amplify/blob/master/media/authent...
It's an easy way to build out your own UX for authentication flows and customize the experience.
In AWS Amplify – A declarative library for application developmentAWS Amplify – A declarative library for application development
95 points · Open discussion