Typescript: type safety and better structure in the code base
What is TypeScript?
TypeScript is an open source programming language developed by Microsoft. It was first released in 2012 and has since become an important part of the web development ecosystem. TypeScript is a statically typed language, which means that developers must declare the data type of variables, functions, and other objects in their code. This helps avoid errors that can be caused by improper type assignments or lack of type checking.
Advantages of TypeScript
One of the biggest advantages of TypeScript is type safety. Static typing allows our developers to catch errors early in the development process, before they become serious problems. The result is higher code quality and better maintainability. Another benefit of TypeScript is better code readability. Typing allows code to be more clearly structured, provides better documentation, and is therefore easier for other developers to understand. In addition, TypeScript provides a variety of features and tools that help our developers be more productive. These include, for example, auto-completion, code refactoring, and debugging support.
A simple example
A very simple example of using TypeScript would be to declare a variable as a number (number). If the code now tries to assign a string to this variable, the developer receives an error message already in the code editor before the code is executed. And this although there is no syntax error in Javascript, because Javascript actually works without typing and would allow the assignment in principle. During the execution e.g. a calculation error could occur, since calculations are possible only with numbers, but not with character strings. Without typing, such a runtime error could only be detected when the code is executed and would be very tedious to fix without an error message.
Our use of TypeScript
We use Typescript for the development of web applications, mobile applications and server applications. Our development team relies on TypeScript especially in conjunction with the Vue.js framework and is excited about the improvements it has brought to our code and error reduction. Using TypeScript has clearly led to better team collaboration and helped us create higher quality and more maintainable code bases.
Our Conclusion
TypeScript offers developers many benefits, including type safety, better code readability, and productivity gains. It has become an important part of the web development ecosystem and is used in practice by many companies and projects. Among them, for example, Microsoft, Google, Airbnb or Slack. For JavaScript developers looking for a way to improve their codebase, TypeScript is definitely a must-have in our view.