Why TypeScript

For many of the developers, TypeScript seems like a completely new language. But to me, it is just JavaScript with added type system. In this post, I am going to discuss why we should use TypeScript over plain old JavaScript.

Type System

Let me lead the post with TypeScript's awesome typing-system. In plain JavaScript, there are no types. Values are assigned to variables dynamically. When I say a language is dynamic, I essentially mean that we can re-assign variables with different data types. For example, if we a declare variable let whatever = 10, this variable will be of type Integer. Now in a strongly-typed static language, we cannot reassign this variable with a different data type, say a String.

If a programmer has not used any statically-typed languages in the past, this additional type-system on top of JavaScript can be a bit hectic and frustrating while working on a project. But if we look at the bigger picture, we can prevent so many bugs right at the compile time by passing values of the correct type.

For example, if a function parameter type is set as String, and we pass a value of type Number while invoking it, TypeScript compiler will not compile the code. On the other hand, JavaScript will report no error at all.

Self Documenting

Since each variable in TypeScript has a type associated with it, it's very easy to read and understand that codebase. Check out the below code for example:

interface DbOpts {
  host: string;
  port: number;
  username: string;
  password: string;
  database: string;
}

function connectDB(opts: DbOpts) {
  return db.connect(opts);
}

In the above code snippet, if we call connectDB() function without the correct parameter (or even a single property, as all of the properties, are required), the TypeScript compiler will throw an error saying that there's a type mismatch. Isn't that useful?

Of course, we can use JSDoc, but to be honest, JSDoc is not reliable when it comes to type-checking. The reason is, JSDoc is a documentation tool, not a compiler or type checker.

Object-Oriented Programming

TypeScript fully supports object oriented programming. Class field modifiers are a recent addition to JavaScript. Thanks to V8 engine, we can use it in Node without any polyfill. TypeScript had these features for a long time. It supports class field modifiers such as private, public and protected.

Autocompletion

Almost all of the popular IDE and text editors have great support for TypeScript. With TypeScript, you get better support for auto-completion of code. And most of the time, editors would highlight any type of errors before you even run the program.

Again, JSDoc can be a replacement for this. And it is what we used when TypeScript was not so popular. But both of these tools have their own tasks to accomplish.

Transpile Code

TypeScript can compile to many versions of ECMAScript. You can use all the latest features of JavaScript happily and still be stress-free about supporting the older environments.

Point to be noted here: TypeScript does not polyfill anything. It converts code from one version of JavaScript to another. For example, if your codebase has some code snippets that the target version does not support, TypeScript will convert the code so that it is compitable with the older version of ECMAScript.

const isTrue: Boolean | undefined = undefined;
const hello = isTrue ?? "not set to a boolean value";

If we choose ES3 as target, above snippet will be compiled to:

"use strict";
var isTrue = undefined;
var hello =
  isTrue !== null && isTrue !== void 0 ? isTrue : "not set to a boolean value";

Conclusions

There are certainly some drawbacks of using TypeScript over JavaScript. But those drawbacks are so negligible that they don't even count.

TypeScript produces a maintainable codebase. Maybe it won't matter when the codebase is small. But in the long run, we get a codebase that could be maintained by People without losing their sanity. If someone in the team has never used a statically-typed language before, they will need some training.

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