Introducing modified TypeScript in an existing framework to improve error handling
Patrik Minder · KTH Publication Database DiVA (KTH Royal Institute of Technology) · 2016
Error messages in compilers is a topic that is often overlooked. The quality of the messages can have a big impact on development time and ease oflearning. Another method used to speed up development is to build a domainspecific language (DSL). This thesis migrates an existing framework to use TypeScript in order to speed up development time with compile-time error handling. Alternative methods for implementing a DSL are evaluated based onhow they affect the ability to generate good error messages. This is done usinga proposed list of six usability heuristics for error messages. They are also usedto perform heuristic evaluation on the error messages in the TypeScript compiler. This showed that it struggled with syntax errors but had semantic errormessages with low amount of usability problems. Finally, a method for implementing a DSL and presenting its error messages is suggested. The evaluationof said method showed promise despite the existence of usability problems.