What is your favourite Javascript superset and why is it TypeScript?

#typescript #javascript #productivity #discuss

With a wide variety of options out there for writing better Javascript, TypeScript seems to have "won out" of most other options. Growing in popularity immensely in 2019, undoubtedly continuing in 2020: why do you love TypeScript?

For me, I have seen first-hand how TypeScript has made me a better developer. It catches basic mistakes (like trying to pass a number to a function that accepts a string) and combined with ESLint and TypeScript specific rules, I've become more disciplined and conscious in the code that I write.

Top comments (13)

Seanmclem • Jan 13 '20

There are other Javascript supersets?

girlProg • Jan 13 '20

Came to find out what they are 🤷🏽‍♀️

Dwayne Charrington • Jan 13 '20

I think the joke in the headline might have been missed here.

girlProg • Jan 13 '20

Omg i just saw it 😂 crazy

Seanmclem • Jan 13 '20

nope

Adnan Babakan (he/him) • Jan 15 '20

Actually there are. I think CoffeeScript can be counted as a superset of JavaScript. It was famous for a while.

Seanmclem • Jan 15 '20 • Edited

There you go good example. I feel like the joke would have only been funny because typescript is the obvious choice, not because it's the only choice.

Dwayne Charrington • Jan 15 '20

Are you okay, Sean?

Seanmclem • Jan 15 '20

How can I help? Try reading it again

John Peters • Jan 13 '20

I like Typescript because its Architect, Anders Hejlsberg has a stellar history. C# being just one of his accomplishments.

I like to think of Typescript as his newest and best project yet.

Typescript's popularity is just now hitting stride. It is a game changer.

Pacharapol Withayasakpunt • Jan 13 '20 • Edited

You should really rename your question to compile to JavaScript, as it will also include something like Dart (AngularDart / Dart2js), Blazor (C#), etc.

If you mean Babel, Flow, JSX -- I like TypeScript, because it is easy to setup and standardized enough. But under the hood, Vue CLI does create .babelrc.js along with tsconfig.json.

Flow feels like optional TypeScript to me, and it does require compilation.
I don't like JSX / TSX. As for now, I will import HTML with raw-loader instead. (*.vue can also import *.ts as well.)
I also like interface and writing declaration files.

Svelte looks nice. I might try it sometimes.

Elmlang looks both complicated and React-like. I feel like it is not yet for me.

I feel that CoffeeScript is relatively dead...

I don't know much about ReasonML / PureScript, etc.