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JavaScript vs TypeScript: What are the differences?
JavaScript and TypeScript are both popular programming languages used for web development. Here are the key differences between JavaScript and TypeScript:
Type System: JavaScript and TypeScript differ in their type systems. JavaScript is dynamically typed, performing type checking at runtime, while TypeScript is a statically typed superset of JavaScript. With TypeScript, developers can define types for variables, function parameters, and return values, enabling early error detection and improving code readability.
Language Features and Syntax: JavaScript is a versatile language with a concise syntax that supports object-oriented programming, functional programming, and asynchronous programming using promises and async/await. TypeScript, being a superset of JavaScript, includes all the features of JavaScript and adds additional features such as static typing, interfaces, generics, and advanced type inference. These additional language features make TypeScript more robust and provide enhanced tooling support, including code editors with autocompletion and type checking.
Compilation and Compatibility: JavaScript is an interpreted language, meaning the JavaScript code is executed directly by the browser or the JavaScript engine. On the other hand, TypeScript code needs to be transpiled into JavaScript before it can be executed. TypeScript code is compiled to JavaScript using the TypeScript compiler. TypeScript is backward compatible with JavaScript, which means JavaScript code can be seamlessly used within TypeScript projects, allowing for incremental adoption of TypeScript in existing JavaScript codebases.
Developer Productivity and Maintainability: TypeScript enhances developer productivity and code maintainability compared to JavaScript. Its static typing catches errors at compile-time, improving code quality and reducing runtime issues. TypeScript's clear interfaces and type annotations make code easier to understand and refactor. With robust tooling support, TypeScript boosts developer productivity, while JavaScript's dynamic typing may require more effort for maintenance and refactoring.
Community and Ecosystem: JavaScript has a mature ecosystem with abundant libraries, frameworks, and tools. TypeScript builds on top of JavaScript, leveraging this ecosystem and providing enhanced type safety. Many JavaScript libraries have TypeScript support, making it seamless to use them in TypeScript projects. TypeScript also has a dedicated community and tooling support.
In summary, JavaScript is a dynamic scripting language widely used for web development, while TypeScript is a statically typed superset of JavaScript that adds static typing and other advanced language features. TypeScript provides benefits such as type checking, enhanced code maintainability, and improved developer productivity.
So, I've been working with all 3 languages JavaScript, Python and Rust, I know that all of these languages are important in their own domain but, I haven't took any of it to the point where i could say I'm a pro at any of these languages. I learned JS and Python out of my own excitement, I learned rust for some IoT based projects. just confused which one i should invest my time in first... that does have Job and freelance potential in market as well...
I am an undergraduate in computer science. (3rd Year)
I would start focusing on Javascript because even working with Rust and Python, you're always going to encounter some Javascript for front-ends at least. It has: - more freelancing opportunities (starting to work short after a virus/crisis, that's gonna help) - can also do back-end if needed (I would personally avoid specializing in this since there's better languages for the back-end part) - hard to avoid. it's everywhere and not going away (well not yet)
Then, later, for back-end programming languages, Rust seems like your best bet. Its pros: - it's satisfying to work with (after the learning curve) - it's got potential to grow big in the next year (also with better paying jobs) - it's super versatile (you can do high-perf system stuff, graphics, ffi, as well as your classic api server) It comes with a few cons though: - it's harder to learn (expect to put in years) - the freelancing options are virtually non-existent (and I would expect them to stay limited, as rust is better for long-term software than prototypes)
I suggest you to go with JavaScript. From my perspective JavaScript is the language you should invest your time in. The community of javascript and lots of framework helps developer to build what they want to build in no time whether it a desktop, web, mobile based application or even you can use javascript as a backend as well. There are lot of frameworks you can start learning i suggest you to go with (react,vue) library both are easy to learn than angular which is a complete framework.
And if you want to go with python as a secondary tool then i suggest you to learn a python framework (Flask,Django).
I am currently learning web development with Python and JavaScript course by CS50 Harvard university. It covers python, Flask, Django, SQL, Travis CI, javascript,HTML ,CSS and more. I am very interested in Flutter app development. Can I know what is the difference between learning these above-mentioned frameworks vs learning flutter directly? I am planning to learn flutter so that I can do both web development and app development. Are there any perks of learning these frameworks before flutter?
Hey Muhamed, For web development, you'll have to learn how to write backend APIs and how to build UI for browsers, apps, etc. If you're just starting off with programming, I'd suggest you stick to one language and trying developing everything using it to cut the unnecessary learning overhead. Although Python and JavaScript are very similar for beginners, JavaScript is the only available option for both frontend and backend development for a web application. You can start working with Node.js for your API development and Vanilla JS along with HTML/CSS for UI. You'll only need to learn one language to do all of this. Hope this helps.
Flutter is good for everything and it is getting better as I am speaking. Flutter Web is almost ready for production and I have made 2 complex working websites already.
From a management and hiring perspective, I recommend Flutter (Dart). It provides native solutions to both mobile platform ( (Android and IOS) while having the same knowledge. Hiring managers look at this as an advantage since a developer can provide solutions for both platforms whit the same knowledge. The Flutter framework is growing and there is a lot of resources to ground your knowledge and start experimenting. Dart is also a great language that covers most E2E necessities, so again, no further need of learning one language for FE and another for BE and services. It is my belief that Dart will surpass Kotlin soon, and will leverage to Python and Java in the upcoming year.
Well. Flutter is just a Framework (just like Django btw.) and it uses Dart as a programming language. Django is kind of solving a different problem than Dart. Dart is intened for use in Front End Applications and Django is a Framework for Back-End Web Development.
So if you want to program Flutter Apps (although i wouldn't recommend it for any serious web development yet since Flutter web isn't very mature yet) i would recommend you just lern Dart.
If you are interested in Flutter, learn it on your own time, parallel to the course. No matter what order you do them, eventually you will end up learning them all anyway ;-)
We are converting AWS Lambdas from Java due to excessive cold start times. Usage: These lambdas handle XML and JSON payloads, they use s3, API Gateway, RDS, DynamoDB, and external API's. Most of our developers are only experienced in java. These three languages (Go, Node.js, and Python) were discussed, but no consensus has been reached yet.
I've worked with all three of these languages and also with Java developers converting to these languages and far and away Go is the easier one to convert to. With the improved cold-start times and the ease of conversion for a Java developer, it is a no-brainer for me.
The hardest part of the conversion though is going to be the lack of traditional Classes so you have to be mindful of that, but Go Structs and interfaces tend to make up for what is lost there.
Full Disclosure: I'm a 95% Go convert (from Python) at this point in time.
Although I am primarily a Javascript developer myself, I used Go to build AWS lambda in a similar scenario to yours. AWS libraries felt better integrated on the Go side, I believe due to the language itself (e.g. how JSON objects are handled in go). Besides that performance of Go is much superior. But on the cons side; community is far smaller around Go, compared to Javascript. That is easy notice if you look at repos of community-maintained libraries for Go. That can feel a bit unreliable.
Go would provide the easiest transition for Java programmers -- its IDE/tooling is second to none (just install Goland) and the deploy/distribution story is extremely clean and lends itself to work well in lambda: single, static binaries with quick startup. No need to set up a full environment or package dependencies on your lambda AMIs, just copy a file.
I was initially going to suggest JavaScript due to the smaller size needs of AWS Lambdas code and the larger range of libraries and community available (and to avoid Python for this). But I have to agree with the recommendations and rationale of @ayildirim above and I think you should choose any reasonable language that is low-overhead, fast startup, and best supported by AWS Lambda, and that is probably Go. I don't think you are likely to go wrong with that, while you can potentially with the others.
So I'd agree, on the strength of AWS Lambda support and the solid performance of Go, it seems like your best choice here for Lambdas (and I'm going to need to consider that myself going forward... pardon the pun).
If you want to prioritise language familiarity, JavaScript is more like Java than the other choices; and it can be optimised to run very fast. However if you need really fast cold-start times, you can't beat Go since it's compiled. There are other things to consider, such as the massive amount of community packages and help/documentation in the JavaScript ecosystem. Go is newer but seems to be quite popular if you need something that runs fast in a single binary.
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?"
I use TypeScript because:
- incredible developer tooling and community support
- actively developed and supported by Microsoft (yes, I like Microsoft) ;)
- easier to make sense of a TS codebase because the annotations provide so much more context than plain JS
- refactors become easier (VSCode has superb support for TS)
I've switched back and forth between TS and Flow and decided a year ago to abandon Flow completely in favor of TS. I don't want to bash Flow, however, my main grievances are very poor tooling (editor integration leaves much to be desired), a slower release cycle, and subpar docs and community support.
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.
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.
I use TypeScript because the tooling is more mature (the decision to discontinue TSLint in favor of moving all its checks to ESLint is a thoughtful and mature decision), there's a ton of examples and tutorials for it, and it just generally seems to be where the industry is headed. Flow (JS) is a fine tool, but it just hasn't seen the uptake that TS has, and as a result is lacking a lot of the nicer small things, like thorough Visual Studio Code integration, offered by TS.
We use Underscore because it's a reasonable library for providing all the reasonable helper functions missing from JavaScript ES5 (or that perform poorly if you use the default ES5 version).
Since we're migrating the codebase to TypeScript , we'll likely end up removing most usage of it and ultimately no longer needing it, but we've been very happy with the library.
We currently use TypeScript at work. Previously we used Flow (JS) but it was sometimes really difficult to make the types work the way you want. Especially non-trivial types were problematic. And the IDE support wasn't good, Flow took too much resources and sometimes remain stuck and do not show errors (I use Visual Studio Code). With TypeScript we almost do not have these problems. IDE support is superb, working with types is much easier and typing system seems more mature and powerful. There are some downsides (like partion inheritance etc.), but TS team is still pushing it forward. So for me TypeScript is clear winner.
I use TypeScript because it's adoption by many developers, it's supported by many companies, and it's growth. AngularJS, React, @ASP.NET Core. I started using it in .NET Core, then for a job. Later I added more Angular experience and wrote more React software. It makes your code easier to understand and read... which means it makes other people's code easier to understand and read.
I use TypeScript for Web Applications and for both frontend and backend because it has a lot of tooling around it and they really got the types and type safety right. Flow (JS) on the other hand lacks tooling and most of the times I scramble to find the right way of building my contracts in which TypeScript is very intuitive and natural. Additionally TypeScript is very similar to Java so your backend engineers and full stack engineers can work with it without much of context switch.
The only time I think Flow shines is (based on probably my outdated knowledge) Flow is/was the only option if you want/wanted to build a React Native application mainly because React Native transpiler at the time I was working with it would only work with flow.
I use TypeScript because I tried both on a Meteor project, and found the quantity of errors it enabled us to catch and the simplification of code it allowed was higher than Flow (JS).
I use TypeScript because it's the most mature/issue-free Javascript type-checker available, as far as I've seen.
I use TypeScript because of broad support, on tools, repos, community ... the only reason to consider flow is if you're a facebook employee
If you will start a project from scratch I recommend to use TypeScript. But, If you work with legacy projects written in JavaScript I recommend Flow (JS). Both tools have the same objective: reduce the bad code (which create illegible code, generate bugs e problems to maintenance). Flex helps you to avoid fall in bad codes, but TypeScript prevent you to c you to create bad codes. I believe cause this some JavaScript fans don't like TS, because TS block you to write some types o code. This is the fundamental difference between TS and Flow: Flow avoid problems, but no force. TS force you to prevent problems.
I use TypeScript because i love to program in Angular and used in node as well
I recommend TypeScript. When used correctly, TypeScript can enable your application to be scalable, easy to refactor, safe, and stable. One of the biggest draws of working with any typed language is that it forces you to think about your functions' inputs and outputs. This is invaluable as it can lead to more declarative, functional style code that ultimately can be easier to reason about.
TypeScript is however not a silver bullet. Just like anything new it takes time to fully understand the concepts of types, interfaces, abstract classes, and enums. In my experience engineers who excel when using TypeScript are those who have experience working with a statically typed language.
JavaScript is at the forefront of our entire development approach. Not only do we use different JavaScript frameworks and management tools, but we also use pure vanilla JavaScript to solve simple problems throughout all of our client's builds. JavaScript is a general purpose programming language that can be blazing fast and fun to work with. There's not one project we are working on that doesn't involve it.
As the team grew in size, we had to formalize the way we write JS. I beleive it becomes impossible to collaborate on a large codebase without relying on static type checking. we made the switch in a month, it was painful but we never looked back.
The main drawback is when you code, you used to have the code up and running with latest changes in a second. now takes 30secs to run now, so the feedback loop is slower, however, lots of type errors and trivial mistakes are cought by the compiler now
TypeScript is a statically typed language out of the box, with that bringing all the benefits of compilation time code checking. It also has some nice structures and patterns such as union types, exhaustive check and a great and lightweight IDE – VisualStudioCode, providing more level of helpers and control over your TS code than JS. TypeScript is fully interoperable with JS and one can disable all the strictness on demand or choose proper level of it depending of the technology and business needs.
Telegram Messenger has frameworks for most known languages, which makes easier for anyone to integrate with them. I started with Golang and soon found that those frameworks are not up to date, not to mention my experience testing on Golang is also mixed due to how their testing tool works. The natural runner-up was JS, which I'm ditching in favor of TS to make a strongly typed code, proper tests and documentation for broader usage. TypeScript allows fast prototyping and can prevent problems during code phase, given that your IDE of choice has support for a language server, and build phase. Pairing it with lint tools also allows honing code before it even hits the repositories.
In 2015 as Xelex Digital was paving a new technology path, moving from ASP.NET web services and web applications, we knew that we wanted to move to a more modular decoupled base of applications centered around REST APIs.
To that end we spent several months studying API design patterns and decided to use our own adaptation of CRUD, specifically a SCRUD pattern that elevates query params to a more central role via the Search action.
Once we nailed down the API design pattern it was time to decide what language(s) our new APIs would be built upon. Our team has always been driven by the right tool for the job rather than what we know best. That said, in balancing practicality we chose to focus on 3 options that our team had deep experience with and knew the pros and cons of.
For us it came down to C#, JavaScript, and Ruby. At the time we owned our infrastructure, racks in cages, that were all loaded with Windows. We were also at a point that we were using that infrastructure to it's fullest and could not afford additional servers running Linux. That's a long way of saying we decided against Ruby as it doesn't play nice on Windows.
That left us with two options. We went a very unconventional route for deciding between the two. We built MVP APIs on both. The interfaces were identical and interchangeable. What we found was easily quantifiable differences.
We were able to iterate on our Node based APIs much more rapidly than we were our C# APIs. For us this was owed to the community coupled with the extremely dynamic nature of JS. There were tradeoffs we considered, latency was (acceptably) higher on requests to our Node APIs. No strong types to protect us from ourselves, but we've rarely found that to be an issue.
As such we decided to commit resources to our Node APIs and push it out as the core brain of our new system. We haven't looked back since. It has consistently met our needs, scaling with us, getting better with time as continually pour into and expand our capabilities.
Why I chose TypeScript over JavaScript is because I believe that static/strong typing is great for developing a product for scale in the long run. It gives you predictability and confidence on building your application.
I had one problem with JavaScript dealing with data types in a production environment that unit tests didn't even catch. Users are seeing undefined words instead of information the user is fetching from a specific API to deliver the user's needs.
We're still using JavaScript and Node.js, but try to stick with TypeScript for new services and modules. About the benefits of static typing much has been written, in short it:
- offers better maintainability and discoverability of existing code bases
- provides reasonable type safety, which frees us from writing a huge chunk of unit tests and mitigates a large set of problems that are caught in compilation
- affords a new level of expressiveness via types
Nothing is without trade offs; we are aware of, and accept that:
- fighting the compiler can be frustrating
- it adds to the already large list of skills a web developer has to learn
- it adds another piece to the already large set of tools necessary to get code from development to production
Here are our 3 main claims why TypeScript is the way to go.
- TypeScript is simply JavaScript that scales
- TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript
- TypeScript is not a "new" language - It is JavaScript from the future
TypeScript has the following main advantages compared to JavaScript:
Typing & Scoping: With static typing, the type of a variable is known at coding time. In dynamic typing the types might be uncertain which could lead to runtime errors. Therefore Strong typing leads to fewer runtime errors. The declaration of variables when it comes to Function Scoping (var) vs. Block Scoping (let) introduced pitfalls lurking in JavaScript. The solution in ES6 - and thus TypeScript - is let. Because variables declared with let follow the rules of block scoping.
Collaboration: When large coding projects have many developers there is a chance of messier coding. The number of errors increases which makes the handling difficult. With strong typing the amount of errors decreases and debugging becomes much more easier.
Productivity: TypeScript uses the latest ECMA features. Auto-completion features as well as more clear, comprehensible and readable code will boost the productivity of the developer drastically.
The project is a web gadget previously made using vanilla script and JQuery, It is a part of the "Quicktext" platform and offers an in-app live & customizable messaging widget. We made that remake with React eco-system and Typescript and we're so far happy with results. We gained tons of TS features, React scaling & re-usabilities capabilities and much more!
What do you think?
We started the project with typescript but later pivoted to javascript. The major factors to choose Js were community support for Js and available open-source packages. We carefully took this decision because as a startup we have pressing business problems to solve with tight deadlines and dealing with dependency issues for hours would be very time expensive and the costs will increase significantly as the codebase increases in size.
Pros of JavaScript
- Can be used on frontend/backend1.7K
- It's everywhere1.5K
- Lots of great frameworks1.2K
- Fast898
- Light weight745
- Flexible425
- You can't get a device today that doesn't run js392
- Non-blocking i/o286
- Ubiquitousness237
- Expressive191
- Extended functionality to web pages55
- Relatively easy language49
- Executed on the client side46
- Relatively fast to the end user30
- Pure Javascript25
- Functional programming21
- Async15
- Full-stack13
- Setup is easy12
- Future Language of The Web12
- Its everywhere12
- Because I love functions11
- JavaScript is the New PHP11
- Like it or not, JS is part of the web standard10
- Expansive community9
- Everyone use it9
- Can be used in backend, frontend and DB9
- Easy9
- Most Popular Language in the World8
- Powerful8
- Can be used both as frontend and backend as well8
- For the good parts8
- No need to use PHP8
- Easy to hire developers8
- Agile, packages simple to use7
- Love-hate relationship7
- Photoshop has 3 JS runtimes built in7
- Evolution of C7
- It's fun7
- Hard not to use7
- Versitile7
- Its fun and fast7
- Nice7
- Popularized Class-Less Architecture & Lambdas7
- Supports lambdas and closures7
- It let's me use Babel & Typescript6
- Can be used on frontend/backend/Mobile/create PRO Ui6
- 1.6K Can be used on frontend/backend6
- Client side JS uses the visitors CPU to save Server Res6
- Easy to make something6
- Clojurescript5
- Promise relationship5
- Stockholm Syndrome5
- Function expressions are useful for callbacks5
- Scope manipulation5
- Everywhere5
- Client processing5
- What to add5
- Because it is so simple and lightweight4
- Only Programming language on browser4
- Test1
- Hard to learn1
- Test21
- Not the best1
- Easy to understand1
- Subskill #41
- Easy to learn1
- Hard 彤0
Pros of TypeScript
- More intuitive and type safe javascript174
- Type safe106
- JavaScript superset80
- The best AltJS ever48
- Best AltJS for BackEnd27
- Powerful type system, including generics & JS features15
- Compile time errors11
- Nice and seamless hybrid of static and dynamic typing11
- Aligned with ES development for compatibility10
- Angular7
- Structural, rather than nominal, subtyping7
- Starts and ends with JavaScript5
- Garbage collection1
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Cons of JavaScript
- A constant moving target, too much churn22
- Horribly inconsistent20
- Javascript is the New PHP15
- No ability to monitor memory utilitization9
- Shows Zero output in case of ANY error8
- Thinks strange results are better than errors7
- Can be ugly6
- No GitHub3
- Slow2
- HORRIBLE DOCUMENTS, faulty code, repo has bugs0
Cons of TypeScript
- Code may look heavy and confusing5
- Hype4