Should this library be deprecated?

[T-Hugs]

The points in the Motivations section of the README are outdated or not applicable with TypeScript.

Finding an individual element in the document tree and operating on it can lead to null pointer exceptions.

TypeScript now supports optional chaining, and with strictNullChecks enabled, this should never be an issue.

Even if found, the element may be of the wrong type.

The TypeScript definitions for these methods accept a type parameter, which will assert the return type. Obviously, if the fetched element is actually of a different type, it can still lead to runtime errors. On the plus side, there's no runtime cost for the check. But in my experience, this kind of runtime error is extremely rare. Furthermore, this library will just throw an Error anyway, so it's still going to end up being a runtime error.

Why deprecate?

This will discourage new users and point them to the vanilla patterns.

Why keep it?

This library may still be useful for Flow users.