TypeScript vs. JavaScript

Headline: It seems that TypeScript is a better alternative to JavaScript – investigate it.

Testability

The biggest issue I had with JavaScript was the lack of testability. Until a colleague of mine pointed out one of my previous posts I completely forgot about some of the techniques for testing JavaScript. But from what little I’ve read the testability of TypeScript is much better using tsUnit.

Other Sources

In my research I ran across numerous posts about why TypeScript is a good approach:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TypeScript
• http://www.hanselman.com/blog/WhyDoesTypeScriptHaveToBeTheAnswerToAnything.aspx
• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/eternalcoding/archive/2014/04/28/why-we-decided-to-move-from-plain-javascript-to-typescript-for-babylon-js.aspx

I also ran across some that say “It didn’t fix the problem.” But, all those say that JavaScript doesn’t fix it either. They don’t think that JavaScript is better, just that even TypeScript fall short.

• http://www.walkercoderanger.com/blog/2014/02/typescript-isnt-the-answer/

Summary

If you’re just using JavaScript for your coding you’re probably not building a scalable application that’s maintainable. And the code is likely going to look like a collection of hacks.

However, that’s my opinion as someone that works on many software development projects but can’t afford to have them become buggy or high maintenance.