TypeScript Article

Introduction

TypeScript is an open-source programming language developed and maintained by Microsoft.

It is a strict syntactical superset of JavaScript, and adds optional static typing to the language. It is multi-paradigm, can be used for scripting, as well as being able to be object oriented or functional.

TypeScript was released in 2012 after two years of development by Microsoft.

Features

TypeScript is designed for devlopment of larger applications and transcompiles to JavaScript. As TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript, existing JS programs are also valid TypeScript programs may be used to develop JS applications for both client-side and server-side (Node.js) execution.

TypeScript (TS) supports JS libraries - The developers can use existing JS code with the TS. It can use all of the JS frameworks, tools and other libraries.

JS is TS - It means the code written in JS with valid .js extension can be converted to TS by changing the extension from .js to .ts and compiled with other TypeScript files.

TypeScript is portable - TypeScript is portable because it can be run on any browsers, devices or any operating systems. It can be run in any environment where JS runs on. It is not portable to any virtual-machine for execution.

DOM Manipulation - TypeScript can be used to manipulate the DOM for adding or removing elements similar as of JS.

TypeScript is just a JavaScript - TypeScript code is not understandable by any browsers directly. TypeScript code starts with JS and ends with JavaScript. Hence, we only need to know JS to use it in TS. The code is written in TS is compiled and converted into its JS equivalent for the execution. The above process is known as Trans-piled. With the help of JS code, browsers are able to read the code and display the output.

Object-Oriented Language - TypeScript provides a powerful feature of an object-oriented language such as classes, interfaces, inheritance, modules, etc. In this, we ca write code for both client-side as well as server-side development.

Pros/Cons

TypeScript has its pros and cons:

Pros	Cons
Object Oriented Programming Features - TypeScript includes a very good set of Object Oriented Programming (OOP) features that are complex to implement, unless if you are a senior JS programmer. OOP features make the TypeScript code very neat and organized. TS lets us have interfaces, inheritance, and even more advanced concepts such as Generic types, Decorator types, and Dependency injection in our scripts.	Learning Curve - Front-end Development is highly saturated with all types of frameworks and technologies, and it is usually hard to keep up with them. Although TS has become very popular, not all JS developers know TS. This learning curve will also make the team work harder. If a team wants to go all the way, they need to make sure everyone has a good understanding of TS.
TypeScript does not need a runtime plugin - Plugins such as Flash and Silverlight died due to security issues. From this, all modern web technologies translate themselves to standard forms that all major browsers can understand and run. This includes scripting languages, like TS or CoffeeScript, Markup Languages, such as Haml or Markdown, and Styling Languages like Sass or Less. So for TS - All the modern scripts you write will be translated to plain JS and your browsers can happily run it for you.	Needs Development Tooling - Although the visitors' browser do not need any plugin to run TS, developers will need special tooling for their editor or IDE to transpile TypeScript. This also includes the editor enhancements to highlight and format TS keywords for you. Visual Studio / Visual Studio Code is recommended.
More comfortable for back-end developers - Since TS can use OOP and be Functional, and can implement a number of different features and is related to JS but ca be used in the back-end, back-end developers feel much more comfortable using TS and undestanding it, thus closing the gap between front and back end in web development, which can help to make better websites.	Cannot easily be edited be content management systems (CMS) - If you use Content Management Systems to develop websites you know that most of them let you edit .css style files and .js script files on their admin portal. If you want to use TS for your website, it will not be easy to edit it on the admin portal. Some CMS's have plugins to let you edit TS on their portal, but some do not. Things may even get more complicated in this scenario; imagine a developer opens and edits the transpiled JS file on the admin portal, because he/she probably does not see a TS file, then another developer invalidates all of his/her updates by changing the actual TS file and overriding the JS file content!
It is used in popular frameworks - TypeScript has become more and more popular over the last few years. Angular2, otherwise known as just Angular (and NOT AngularJS) officially switched to TypeScript, which was a plus for back-end developers.	Short Update Cycles - TypeScript gets released very frequently, this may cause problems because, firstly, it makes it hard to study the language as it keeps updating. Secondly, how can a developer integrate projects if the language keeps updating frequently, this might ruin big web projects, especially if they take months to complete, this requires the dev team to plan a good strategy.

Extra Programs

TypeScript has many uses, if you would like to learn more please see these extra programs:

Programming Languages - JavaScript, PHP, Java, Python
Front End Web Dev - HTML, CSS
Front End Web Dev Frameworks - ReactJS, VueJS, Angular (written with TS)
Back End Techologies - Node.js
Other - Front End Web design, Mobile app development
Text Editors - Emacs, Vim, Webstorm, Sublime, Atom.

Sources

Summary

In conclusion:

TypeScript is modern and neat, provides the best of both worlds to Front and Back-End Developers. It is also used in the Angular framework and has a chance to be used in more Front-End Web frameworks. Since it is maintained by Microsoft, TypeScript should be able to grow more into a popular language in the future.