As all of you must know, TypeScript is my favorite option for developing for the web, for several reasons, but the main one is that TypeScript adds rules that Javascript doesn’t have, so it makes me feel confident with it.
Learn TypeScript
For that reason, I would like to encourage you to follow the free course at https://typescriptcourses.com, because it is the perfect one for starting with TypeScript. The course is for beginners, from 0, and at the beginning you’ll learn the basic ot TypeScript, and how to use types, adding in later lessons more powerful features of that language, all of them very useful if you like to develop SPA (Simple Page Apps).
My experience with TypeScript. A second reflection
Long ago, I did a reflection about TypeScript,the language I am in love with and the one I use for developing instead of Javascript. Here I will explain why, after 2 years being a Typescript developer.
The main reason I love TypeScript is that you can assing types to variables, so the value contained must be of certain type, and it cannot change (as it happends in Javascript). For small developments, maybe this is not an important feature, but when you code hundred or miles of lines of code, with classes, objects, …. this feature avoid a large amount of errors.
The second feature I use are interfaces, which you can develop complex objects with certain properties and methods, to assing it to variables.
The fact of creating classes is the third aspect I like, because using classes (such as you do in OPP), you can control the public properties and methods, visibility of variables, and reusing of code.
Complicate life with Javascript libraries
As you must know, developing with Javascript can be a hell when using libraries in Typescripts, but it is tricky. You need to locate de definition files (of the libraries, the .d.ts files), al later on, integrated it on the project.
Personally, jQuery has been my referenced library since I started to develop for the web, and it has been for years. This decision is based on the fact that from version to version, there is almost no lost fo compatibility, and migrating to an updated version of jQuery neves has been a problem or a disaster, or a restart learning it. That’s one of the reasons I have to start with React, although I tried. I guess that in 2018 I will try to learn Vue.js, because a lot of people use it, it is created by the community for the community, no company behind.
Another fact is that I hate mixing code, and in web development is frecuent to do it CSS, HTML5 and Javascript on the same file, and that’s why I don’t learn React or other front-end libraries.
Happy coding, and … learn TypeScript!!