I was going through a TypeScript lesson on Object Narrowing, and one of the takeaways was that object narrowing is a way to achieve Structural Typing, and that this is also known as Duck Typing as in the following example:

type User = { email: string, admin: boolean };

let ichigo: User = {
  email: '[email protected]',
  admin: true
}

function sendEmail({email}: {email: string}): string {
  return email;
}

The function sendEmail is Structurally Typed, or apparently, Duck Typed as per the lesson’s note:

Structural typing is also sometimes called “duck typing”. This term is a reference to a saying: “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.”

In programming, “duck typing” means that we only care about the properties we’re accessing, and we don’t care whether the object has extra properties.

Another article gave the technical definition as:

Duck Typing is a way of programming in which an object passed into a function or method supports all method signatures and attributes expected of that object at run time. The object’s type itself is not important. Rather, the object should support all methods/attributes called on it.

Useful for ensuring object properties can be worked with as a subset of the larger object, and also for qualifying the traits of numerous species of waterfowl in the family Anatidae.

#TIL #TheMoreYouKnow