Learning JavaScript? Here's Why You Should Switch To TypeScript As Soon As Possible.
What is TypeScript?
TypeScript is basically an extension of JavaScript. It's a free and open source language that's built over JavaScript which provides static typing and other new features and is typically a better choice for building large applications.
TypeScript files get transpiled into JavaScript files. We won't be actually running the typescript files, we'll be only using it at the time of development but the actual app would run on JavaScript.
Why You Should Switch to TypeScript
Detecting Errors Efficiently
JavaScript detects errors at run-time, which means that you don't know what errors you might have in your JavaScript code until you run the code. Whereas TypeScript on the other hand detects errors at compile time which makes it easier to detect errors and fix them before pushing the code to production.
Better Choice for Large-Scale Development
Developing large-scale apps is tedious with JavaScript. The features and comfort that TypeScript offers is just too hard to ignore. With TypeScript, you'll be able to develop more efficient apps with a maintainable codebase which might not be that easy with JavaScript.
Type Safety
One of the main reasons why TypeScript was developed was to introduce types in JavaScript which makes it more harder to get errors and it makes it easier for you to detect errors during compile time. So its a no brainer to use TypeScript because you'll be avoiding a lot of errors this way.
Makes it Easier To Work With New Libraries and Frameworks
If you use Visual Studio Code for developing TypeScript, then you can utilise tools like IntelliSense which will make it easier for you to write code with new libraries because IntelliSense supports features like Auto Complete etc. which will make things easy for you.
Additional Language Features
TypeScript provides additional features like Namespaces, Interfaces, Null Checking, Generics and Access Modifiers which makes it a better choice for writing code.
Is It A Must To Switch To TypeScript?
No, one doesn't need to switch to TypeScript but with additional language features and compile-time error detection that you get, it's easily a better choice to use TypeScript but if you're doing small scale projects then you can go with JavaScript.