Why should you use Typescript?

In this article we will discuss typescript and why it is important to use.

Maybe you know the phrase "Typescript is a superset of javascript".

what is that mean?

First of all, we will discuss what javascript does NOT give us.

Javascript is a dynamic programming language or a dynamic data type, which mean the variable or property can hold different data type at runtime.

let user = { name: "Mahmoud", age: 23 };

...
.
....
user.age = "24";
.
..
..
..
.
user.age += 1; // that is will assign 241           

So as we saw in the example above the variable changed data type at runtime and when we add a 1 to the age it will give us an unexpected result because a developer changes the data type to a string.

Maybe this is a simple example but thinks of it as a project ten developer work on it.

we discuss what is the problem with javascript now we will discuss what is typescript.

Typescript is a development tool that gives us static checking.

Development tool means it will doesn't use in production, it uses just in development.

Static Checking will give us a type for variables in javascript like the example below to prevent another developer from changing the data type for a variable or property.

// typescript code
interface User {
  name: string,
  age: number
}
let user = { name: "Mahmoud", age: 23 }

...
.
....
user.age = "24"; // this will give an error 
.
..
..
..
.
user.age += 1;        

By the way, the errors will appear when we write the code immediately.

Conclusion: Typescript is just a type safety so when you have a big project and has many calculations (processes) you should use typescript. you will write more code but it is type safety, maintainable and scalable.