TypeScript is making programming better
The life of a JavaScript developer is busy. JavaScript was originally designed to build logic into small front-end apps to make them function dynamically based on user interaction. The language has expanded its application domain far beyond the browser. It is now used to power backends, create hybrid mobile applications, architect cloud solutions, design neural networks, and even control robots. The versatility of JavaScript paired with its high adoption rate has created an increasing demand for scalable, secure, performant, and feature-rich JavaScript applications. This, in turn, has created a need for tooling, libraries, and frameworks that make it easier and faster to write applications that meet those expectations. Developers found themselves spending much more time on debugging and maintaining the code rather than writing new code.
Then came TypeScript
This demand for high performance, maintainable, and robust JavaScript led to the introduction of TypeScript. Typescript can be described as an improved version of JavaScript with increased readability, static compilation, intuitive interface, and typing.
By definition, TypeScript is a typed superset of JavaScript. This means that all existing JavaScript is also valid TypeScript. And that you can convert an existing JavaScript project to contain type definitions and other language features that make maintenance and scalability of your project much easier and efficient in the long run. More frameworks are adopting the tool, and a lot more companies recognize its value. The patterns that we can track from statistics clearly show that Typescript has already gained high momentum. It’s popular both on the job market and among developers.
A Result you can trust
The typescript was created to act as that superset of JavaScript that puts the future of the language in the hands of today’s developers. Moreover, TypeScript integrates features such as type-checking, generics, and interfaces, that mitigate many points of failure present in JavaScript and rev up development. All that TypeScript gives you is convenient syntactic sugar that eventually gets all converted to cross-platform JavaScript. Do take note that valid TypeScript is not a valid JavaScript code. TypeScript contains syntax and abstractions that do not exist in JavaScript and using them with JavaScript would generate JavaScript runtime errors. TypeScript code is transformed into JavaScript code via the TypeScript compiler or Babel. This JavaScript is a clean, simple code that runs anywhere JavaScript runs: In a browser, on Node.JS, or in your apps. Passing a number argument to a function that expects a string parameter generates no errors in JavaScript during development but will create havoc during runtime when the body of the function is not able to use that argument correctly. To prevent these runtime issues, TypeScript was designed as a strongly typed language that performs static type-checking during its compilation time to JavaScript. For flexibility, the type-checking capabilities of TypeScript are optional; however, most of the TypeScript key benefits revolve around type-checking - it’s the main reason to use TypeScript!
Gradual Adoption
TypeScript brings a lot of benefits to our productivity and developer experience. We’ve seen that integrating it with an existing JavaScript project is easy and carries little to no overhead. TypeScript is not unique to Angular, other powerful frontend frameworks such as React and Vue are starting to be used with TypeScript to allow developer teams to create applications that are reliable, sustainable, and scalable.
JavaScript and TypeScript are continually evolving but not competing against each other. The TypeScript was created to complement and enhance JavaScript - not replace it. The future may see them becoming very similar in features but with TypeScript remaining the statically-typed alternative. Plus, this knowledge might eventually be useful with other static languages – like Java, NodeJS, Golang, Python. Most importantly, you’ll be able to work efficiently with large teams and build high-quality code, which is the end goal, anyway.
