Consider Using TypeScript

5 minute read

I'm not going to be one of those that tells you have to use TypeScript (or Flow for that matter). I'm also not going to go into the whole TS vs. Flow debate. There are plenty of people already doing that. All I want to do is present some good reasons why you might want to consider using TypeScript. After that, I leave it up to you.

I've been using TypeScript since fall 2014 (v. 1.3). It's come a long way. The amount of care that has gone into the language to keep it as a superset of JavaScript (not altering the JS language) is amazing. Kudos to Anders Hejlsberg, the entire TypeScript team and OSS peeps that have made this such a great project.

Why TypeScript? permalink

So let's get to it. If you've never used a statically typed language like Java or C#, this may seem foreign to you. You're probably asking yourself, why TypeScript?

Great, looks awesome, but what about consuming npm packages from projects that don't use TypeScript? As mentioned briefly above, Visual Studio Code can grab the declaration files even if your project doesn't use TypeScript. So where are these declaration files coming from?

TypeScript Declaration Files permalink

What is a TypeScript declaration file? In a nutshell, it's a file that describes what types are in a package. For authors of TypeScript based projects, they will almost always author TypeScript declaration files. For projects that aren't written in TypeScript, sometimes, package authors will write the declaration files by hand and maintain them in their projects. In most cases though, the community has stepped in/up to write declaration files by hand of projects that aren't written in TypeScript. They're all housed in a repository called DefinitelyTyped, a repository of high quality TypeScript type definitions maintained by the JS/TS OSS community.

To add types for a package that does not have its own declaration file, install its equivalent @types package. e.g. npm install lodash --save;npm install @types/lodash --save-dev; Now when you use lodash in your TS project in a TS capable editor, you will get typed Intellisense.

Who's Using It? permalink

The hard (smart) work and love that has gone into TypeScript has not gone unnoticed. In recent times, some fairly large projects that you may know have migrated to TypeScript.

Note: I update this list from time to time.

I'm sure there are others, but these are the big ones I'm aware of. You can always check GitHub for trending TypeScript projects.

Additional Resources permalink

Here are some additional resources to get you up and running.

To summarize, TypeScript is a great option if you're looking to scale a team up quickly on a codebase (Intellisense, refactoring) as well as catching silly errors via type checking.

Thanks goes out to @drosenwasser, @RichSeviora and @nojvek for taking the time to review this blog post. 💯 🔥

Questions or comments? Hit me up on Twitter @nickytonline.

P.S. Happy 5th birthday TypeScript!