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Difference between TypeScript and JavaScript

TypeScript Vs. JavaScript: Here, we are going to learn about the differences between TypeScript and JavaScript.
Submitted by Siddhant Verma, on August 29, 2021

JavaScript has been around for quite a while now but there seems to be a modern replacement for it that has been popular for the past few years. The typescript was originally launched in 2012 by Microsoft and is used a lot today for making web applications better. In this article, we'll see what typescript is, how it is different than JavaScript and where and why it is used.

You already know that JavaScript is weakly typed. This means that when we're declaring variables we don't need to worry about what their type has to be. We can use pretty much the same syntax to create an integer, a character, a string, an array, etc. However, as the name suggests Typescript is strongly typed. It is often referred to as strongly typed JavaScript where one specifies the type of the variable used. These are types and interfaces that it uses to describe data being used.

Thus, Typescript is a superset (not a subset) of JavaScript. It has extensive support for JavaScript libraries and one can easily get a good hold of Typescript knowledge through neat documentation. Since it's very similar to JavaScript, at any point in time you can easily convert your TypeScript code to JavaScript code.

Let's see a few of its advantages and understand its power. Typescript allows one to write more modular code and use object-oriented programming methods easily. Since it's a better version of JavaScript, one can use the additional features for functions. It has support for ES6, the most widely used version of JavaScript, and helps us write more maintainable code. It also uses the feature of prototyping that JavaScript does not.

Let's look at why and where Typescript is not preferred with respect to JavaScript. Firstly, being a more advanced version of JavaScript one must learn JavaScript first in order to learn TypeScript, or at least one should. This means that you can migrate from JavaScript to TypeScript easily. Typescript uses NodeJs to run, which means the daunting npm environment to simply write the simplest lines of code whereas JavaScript can be written anytime anywhere. To write the plain old JavaScript you need not use npm or NodeJs. This also implies that Typescript's code needs to be compiled. In the end, everybody knows and loves JavaScript. There's an immensely large community of developers who're working towards making JavaScript and its libraries better whereas TypeScript is relatively new and does not have such strong community support as of yet.

However, being so powerful an experienced developer should always wait and ponder if their application or project falls within the need of Typescript. It's preferred a lot nowadays for large applications and Projects. It is used by many companies today such as Asana and Angular 2 and higher versions.