We are choosing to use TypeScript over regular JavaScript as it will allow us to leverage all of JavaScript’s features while taking advantage of the stronger debugging support and readability of static typing. One of the highlights of TypeScript is that its features (such as static typing) are entirely optional, meaning that our team can choose to write mostly JavaScript code, utilizing our existing experience, while taking advantage of TypeScript’s features when beneficial. While setting up TypeScript will take a little additional time compared to regular JavaScript, it will ultimately increase our efficiency and productivity.
We chose to use React due to its excellent selection of third-party libraries, ease-of-use, shallow learning curve, and developer tools/support. Although it is a JavaScript library, it is completely compatible with TypeScript. Logistically, it would be advantageous for our team as well since two of our three developers have used it heavily in the past. We will be pairing React with the Redux library, which will greatly simplify our React state management and help increase our code organization. We will also be using the Material-UI framework, which provides highly configurable components that we can use in our application.