alt Hacker NewsSo, some history. When SPA's started to boom on the web JSDoc was a life saver for typing. Application state was getting more complex. We needed more guard rails.
Then Google Closure Compiler came along which added type safety via JSDOC and TS came along with (TS)JSDoc support and it's own TS syntax.
The community chose native TS and Google Closure compiler slipped away into the background.
So (TS)JSDoc support is a relic from when Microsoft was trying to get market share from Google.
Today in 2025, TS offers so much more than the (TS)JSDoc implementation. Generics, Enums, Utility types, Type Testing in Vitest, typeguards, plus other stuff.
Today I use TS. I also use plain JSDoc for documentation. e.g. @link and @see for docs. Or @deprecated when I'm flagging a method to be removed. @example for a quick look up of how to use a component.
TS and plain JSDoc are both important together. But (TS)JSDoc alone, is a relic of the past.
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The article is an explicit response to the point you’re making.
> Today in 2025, TS offers so much more than the (TS)JSDoc implementation. Generics, Enums, Utility types, Type Testing in Vitest, typeguards, plus other stuff.
This was my main impetus for writing this article. Modern JSDoc uses the TypeScript language service. You can use generics, utility types, typeguards (including the `is` keyword), regex parsing, etc all with just JSDoc.
I used these features extensively (especially generics) in a personal project and managed to do it all in JSDoc.