Overview

TypeScript

Stacks105.1K

Followers74.2K

Votes503

GitHub Stars106.6K

Forks13.1K

ES6

Stacks72.5K

Followers60.9K

Votes167

ES6 vs TypeScript: What are the differences?

Introduction:

ES6 (ECMAScript 2015) and TypeScript are both programming languages that are commonly used for web development. While they share similarities, there are also key differences between the two.

Strict Typing: One of the major differences between ES6 and TypeScript is the presence of strict typing in TypeScript. TypeScript enforces static typing, where variables and function parameters must have specified types. This helps catch potential errors during development and improves code reliability. On the other hand, ES6 does not have built-in support for strict typing and allows for more flexibility in variable types.
Object-Oriented Programming Features: TypeScript provides support for features like classes, interfaces, and modules, making it a more object-oriented programming (OOP) language. It allows for the creation of objects, inheritance, interfaces to define contracts, and modularization of code. ES6, however, has limited support for OOP features and focuses more on adding new features and syntax improvements to JavaScript.
Compilation: TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript, meaning that valid JavaScript code is also valid TypeScript code. However, TypeScript code needs to be compiled to JavaScript before it can be executed in a browser. This extra step of compilation is not required in ES6, as it can be directly executed by modern browsers that support ES6 features.
Tooling and IDE Support: TypeScript offers robust tooling and support from popular Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) like Visual Studio Code. It provides autocompletion, code navigation, and error checking, making development more efficient. While some ES6 features are supported by IDEs, they do not provide the same level of tooling and support as TypeScript.
Backward Compatibility: ES6 is designed to be compatible with older versions of JavaScript, allowing existing JavaScript code to run without modification. TypeScript, on the other hand, introduces additional syntax and features that may not be supported by older JavaScript runtimes. This can make it challenging to integrate TypeScript into projects that heavily rely on legacy JavaScript code.
Community and Adoption: JavaScript has been around for a long time and has a large and active community of developers. ES6 is widely supported by modern browsers and has been adopted by many developers across different industries. TypeScript, although gaining popularity, is still relatively newer and has a smaller community. It is often used in larger projects or organizations that require strong typing and better tooling.

In Summary, ES6 and TypeScript differ in their approach to typing, support for object-oriented programming features, compilation requirements, tooling and IDE support, backward compatibility, and community adoption.

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Advice on TypeScript, ES6

Jarvis

May 16, 2019

Reviewon

TypeScript

Flow (JS)

I use TypeScript because it isn't just about validating the types I'm expecting to receive though that is a huge part of it too. Flow (JS) seems to be a type system only. TypeScript also allows you to use the latest features of JavaScript while also providing the type checking. To be fair to Flow (JS), I have not used it, but likely wouldn't have due to the additional features I get from TypeScript.

168k views168k

Comments

David

VP Engineering at Trolley

May 16, 2019

Reviewon

JavaScript

Flow (JS)

TypeScript

We originally (in 2017) started rewriting our platform from JavaScript to Flow (JS) but found the library support for Flow was lacking. After switching gears to TypeScript we've never looked back. At this point we're finding that frontend and backend libraries are supporting TypeScript out of the box and where the support is missing that the commuity is typically got a solution in hand.

173k views173k

Comments

StackShare

Aug 13, 2019

Needs adviceon

TypeScript

CoffeeScript

JavaScript

From a StackShare community member: "We are looking to rewrite our outdated front-end with TypeScript. Right now we have a mix of CoffeeScript and vanilla JavaScript. I have read that adopting TypeScript can help enforce better code quality, and best practices. I also heard good things about Flow (JS). Which one would you recommend and why?"

405k views405k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

TypeScript	ES6
TypeScript is a language for application-scale JavaScript development. It's a typed superset of JavaScript that compiles to plain JavaScript.	Goals for ECMAScript 2015 include providing better support for large applications, library creation, and for use of ECMAScript as a compilation target for other languages. Some of its major enhancements include modules, class declarations, lexical block scoping, iterators and generators, promises for asynchronous programming, destructuring patterns, and proper tail calls.
Statistics
GitHub Stars 106.6K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 13.1K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 105.1K	Stacks 72.5K
Followers 74.2K	Followers 60.9K
Votes 503	Votes 167
Pros & Cons
Pros 173 More intuitive and type safe javascript 105 Type safe 80 JavaScript superset 48 The best AltJS ever 27 Best AltJS for BackEnd Cons 5 Code may look heavy and confusing 4 Hype	Pros 109 ES6 code is shorter than traditional JS 52 Module System Standardized 2 Destructuring Assignment 2 Extremly compact 1 The database is recommended to use MySQL Cons 1 Suffers from baggage 1 Create Node.js

What are some alternatives to TypeScript, ES6?

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

Python

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

PHP

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Java

Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!

Golang

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.

C#

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

Scala

Scala is an acronym for “Scalable Language”. This means that Scala grows with you. You can play with it by typing one-line expressions and observing the results. But you can also rely on it for large mission critical systems, as many companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, or Intel do. To some, Scala feels like a scripting language. Its syntax is concise and low ceremony; its types get out of the way because the compiler can infer them.

Elixir

Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems, while also being successfully used in web development and the embedded software domain.