Well, I have to admit, I was a bit taken aback when I stumbled upon those namespaces buried in the legacy codebase last Tuesday. I mean, come on, Redux? That’s so 2020. But hey, you know what they say – one developer’s relic is another’s treasure. And as I dug a little deeper, I realized that these “IIFE-generating relics” might actually have a place in the modern TypeScript landscape.

Sure, the documentation practically yells at you to use ES Modules these days. But as I learned, namespaces aren’t just types – they actually generate JavaScript code, which can be pretty handy in certain situations. And with Node.js pushing the boundaries on native TypeScript support, I was pleasantly surprised to see these namespaces running smoothly without any build steps.

But the real epiphany came when I realized that namespaces are basically just objects. They create a nice, organized structure for your code, and they even have that nifty “declaration merging” feature that ES Modules can’t touch. I mean, come on, who doesn’t love a good $.ajax moment?

The One Thing Modules Can’t Do

And that’s where namespaces really shine. Sure, they might not be the flavor of the month, but they’ve got a few tricks up their sleeve that ES Modules can’t match. Like that whole “declaration merging” thing – it’s surprisingly useful, especially when you’re dealing with those pesky third-party libraries with terrible type definitions.

But let’s be real here – in a brand-new project, you’re probably better off sticking to ES Modules. They’re the standard, they play nice with all the tools, and they generally just make your life easier. But for those legacy codebases, or when you need to wrangle some global constants, namespaces can still be a pretty handy tool to have in your TypeScript toolbox.

Just… maybe don’t go overboard with the nesting, alright? I mean, I’ve seen some things, and they ain’t pretty.