Time for TypeScript

Front-end developers, give yourself the gift of TypeScript fluency this holiday season. Even if you plan to dive into ECMAScript 6, you can still have the ability to easily experiment with TypeScript.

I’ve been brushing up on JavaScript (ECMAScript 5), and want to also write TypeScript without setting up an asset pipeline or being forced to use IDEs like Visual Studio or Sublime.

Creating a new shebang

I’d like to be able to maintain or compare JS and TS implementations side by side, but the default behavior of the TypeScript compiler tends to overwrite my JS files. Searching the Internet, I didn’t find any way to execute TypeScript files without first generating JavaScript. I decided to use a new shebang (#!/usr/bin/env typescript) and create a bash wrapper to handle this safely.

Now I can write and execute simple stand-alone TypeScript files.

Configuring Vim to use TypeScript

Microsoft provides a syntax color file for vim. To get it working, I had to remove the CTRL-M character from typescript.vim with dos2unix, and create a filetype.vim. Now that I have TypeScript syntax color working in vim, it feels like a real language.

Rise of the new JS frameworks

In 2016, React and AngularJS are going to surpass everything that came before. Although React development is most conventional with ECMAScript, it is possible to use TypeScript. The AngularJS community will certainly be using TypeScript. Angular 2 is written in TypeScript, and all the testing and debugging tools will be tightly integrated with and benefit from TypeScript features.

Other resources

If you are just getting started with TypeScript, you’ll find the TypeScript Playground very helpful. I find it extremely valuable to see how optional types are handled and new ECMAScript 6 keywords are converted to ECMAScript 5. You may even find that poking around in the TypeScript Playground gives you a better understanding of ECMAScript 5.