What is your favourite Javascript superset and why is it TypeScript?

With a wide variety of options out there for writing better Javascript, TypeScript seems to have "won out" of most other options. Growing in popularity immensely in 2019, undoubtedly continuing in 2020: why do you love TypeScript?

For me, I have seen first-hand how TypeScript has made me a better developer. It catches basic mistakes (like trying to pass a number to a function that accepts a string) and combined with ESLint and TypeScript specific rules, I've become more disciplined and conscious in the code that I write.

Comments

[Seanmclem]

There are other Javascript supersets?

[girlProg]

Came to find out what they are 🤷🏽‍♀️

[Dwayne Charrington]

I think the joke in the headline might have been missed here.

[girlProg]

Omg i just saw it 😂 crazy

[Seanmclem]

nope

[Adnan Babakan (he/him)]

Actually there are. I think CoffeeScript can be counted as a superset of JavaScript. It was famous for a while.

[Seanmclem]

There you go good example. I feel like the joke would have only been funny because typescript is the obvious choice, not because it's the only choice.

[Dwayne Charrington]

Are you okay, Sean?

[Seanmclem]

How can I help? Try reading it again

[John Peters]

I like Typescript because its Architect, Anders Hejlsberg has a stellar history. C# being just one of his accomplishments.

I like to think of Typescript as his newest and best project yet.

Typescript's popularity is just now hitting stride. It is a game changer.

[Pacharapol Withayasakpunt]

You should really rename your question to compile to JavaScript, as it will also include something like Dart (AngularDart / Dart2js), Blazor (C#), etc.

If you mean Babel, Flow, JSX -- I like TypeScript, because it is easy to setup and standardized enough. But under the hood, Vue CLI does create .babelrc.js along with tsconfig.json.

• Flow feels like optional TypeScript to me, and it does require compilation.
• I don't like JSX / TSX. As for now, I will import HTML with raw-loader instead. (*.vue can also import *.ts as well.)
• I also like interface and writing declaration files.

Svelte looks nice. I might try it sometimes.

Elmlang looks both complicated and React-like. I feel like it is not yet for me.

I feel that CoffeeScript is relatively dead...

I don't know much about ReasonML / PureScript, etc.

[saint4eva]

Blazor (C#) is not really about compiling down to JavaScript, rather about targeting WebAssembly which almost all the modern browsers support.

[Juan Carlos]

Nim for me.