#NeedToNode Recap: Best Practices using TypeScript with Node.js
Yesterday, we had our monthly webinar #NeedToNode with Bryan Hughes of Microsoft, on the topic of best practices when using TypeScript with Node.js. Here's a quick recap of what he covered.
Top 5 Takeaways
- TypeScript is a typed superset of JavaScript, with static typing built-in
- TypeScript implements much of the ES6 spec, and compiles to plain JS
- TypeScript can be mixed with regular JavaScript
- TypeScript extensions exist for many text editors (VS Code, Atom, Sublime, Vim, and others)
- Install with
npm install -g typescript typings
Video
Recap
TypeScript runs regular JavaScript, but the TypeScript interpreter has built in Type checking. TypeScript makes this possible through Primitives and Interfaces. This allows for safer shipping, ensuring that you don’t write or refactor with missing arguments or have typos in variable and function calls.
TypeScript uses the ES6 Module Spec, but also allows for use of CommonJS modules - including when you’re using TypeScript in Node.js. If you want to run your TypeScript-based modules or applications in the stable version of Node, you can just compile to ES6. If you want to run in the LTS version of Node, you can compile to ES6 and use Babel to transpile to ES5 for the best result.
TypeScript allows for quicker understanding of source code, as its statically-typed structure is, to a reader, more self-documenting than JavaScript.
TypeScript is ideal for use in larger team, for larger projects, and for people coming from Java, C#, C++, and other statically Typed language.
TypeScript doesn’t extend the native Types in JavaScript - TypeScript doesn’t add a bunch of extra types that are present in many of the statically typed languages.
TypeScript plays well with JavaScript! You can run any regular JavaScript within the TypeScript compiler and it will run exactly how it should. This makes it simple to convert a project to TypeScript - you can convert file by file, testing your changes incrementally.
Resources
Demo code for this #NeedToNode:
Official TypeScript Resources:
- TypeScript Official Site
- TypeScript Samples
- TypeScript on GitHub
- TypeScript Playground - a TypeScript REPL
Visual Studio Code, written by Microsoft in TypeScript:
- Visual Studio Code Official Site
- Visual Studio Code Downloads
- Visual Studio on GitHub
- Chris Dias at EnterpriseJS Seattle on how Microsoft built VS Code
Writing with TypeScript:
- Visual Studio Code Guide
- TypeScript with Atom
- TypeScript with Sublime Text
- TypeScript with Vim
- TypeScript for Emacs
Connect
- Bryan Hughes - @nebrius
- Gaurav Seth - @gaurav
- Daniel Rosenwasser - @drosenwasser
- Visual Studio Code - @code
- Official TypeScript - @typescriptlang