I’m currently working on the Burner Signal project. So far I’ve created the React app that will hopefully be used as the proof of concept.
One problem – so far I’ve done everything in pure Javascript but there’s a strong desire to use TypeScript only.
Oh and another problem – I haven’t developed with TypeScript before! 🤔😂
But…this is a perfect opportunity to learn something new especially as the best way to learn something is to actually build something with it.
So after a bit of reading I do get what the proposed benefits of TypeScript are:
- Because it uses Types and it transpiles to Javascript the compiler can catch errors – I can definitely see the benefits in this!
- Using Types is a kind of self documentation
- IDE integration – dev environments provide lots of TypeScript support which should make it more efficient and faster to develop
I will give it a shot and see if the above is true!
The first thing I need to do is get my current create-react-app which is using pure Javascript migrated to use TypeScript. It was surprisingly easy!
- yarn add typescript @types/node @types/react @types/react-dom @types/jest
- Change an existing .js file to use .jsx
- Restart server – this is important!
- That’s it!
Now to learn the basics of TypeScript. For this I’m using the React-TypeScript Cheatsheet and the first suggestion is to get familiar with TypeScript by following 2alitys guide which I’m working through next.