Welcome to Part 1 of this review of the Pluralsight course Practical TypeScript Migration by Steve Ognibene.

Steve has been doing professional web development since the year 2000, and specializes in SQL Server, C#, VB.NET and TypeScript.

He loves teaching and talking about all of the technology platforms he uses, and is an active contributor to open source projects.

Also in this series:

Part 2 – The First Conversion

Part 3 – TypeScript Build and Test Pipeline

Part 4 – TypeScript Build and Test Pipeline

Practical TypeScript Migration

Introduction

This course is for developers with existing JavaScript code bases who are interested in migrating them to TypeScript. You will need to have:

1. Some previous experience with JavaScript
2. Some understanding of Object Oriented or Strongly Typed languages: e.g. Steve won’t be explaining what an interface is
3. Comfortable using the command line

This course does not discuss using TypeScript with Angular.

We will see Steve taking a JavaScript game using jQuery, Knockout and Qunit, and migrating it to TypeScript from start to finish.

Steve says his aim is to advise us in a way that we enjoy the key benefits of TypeScript, while minimizing or avoiding the downsides.

Steve recommends using Atom with Basarat‘s atom-typescript plugin. I have recently switched to Atom and not regretted it. I have also found that Visual Studio Code is a good editor with very good support for TypeScript.

Steve also introduces TypeScript and many of its features here, such as the compilation “slider bar”, and the ability to disable type checking on a variable.

It’s a superset of JavaScript which embraces the existing type system of JavaScript. TypeScript is compiled to JavaScript.

You’ve heard the sayings:

“If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is”  and
“There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch”

So what are the costs of using TypeScript? Steve explains:

• Need for training
• Fighting with compiler
• Incorrect Type Definitions
• Compile Step

However a major benefit of TypeScript is it makes it easier to refactor.

“You can write JavaScript code fast, but you can’t refactor JavaScript at the speed that you write it.” – Erich Gamma

At it’s best, TypeScript can free up our brains to focus on the hard design problems that we’re paid to be solve.

Steve feels that TypeScript has made him a much better JavaScript developer.

This course covers TypeScript 1.4.

 

Related Courses

TypeScript Fundamentals by Dan Wahlin and John Papa, which covers TypeScript 1.0

TypeScript In Depth by Brice Wilson, which covers TypeScript 1.5

Using ES6 with TypeScript by Steve Ognibene, which covers TypeScript 1.7.5

Continue to Part 2 – The First Conversion