Practical Ways to Write Better JavaScript

The number one thing you can do to improve your JS, is by not writing JS. For the uninitiated, TypeScript (TS) is a "compiled" superset of JS (anything that runs in JS runs in TS). TS adds a comprehensive optional typing system on top of the vanilla JS experience. For a long time, TS support across the ecosystem was inconsistent enough for me to feel uncomfortable recommending it. Thankfully, those days are long behind us and most frameworks support TS out of the box. Now that we're all on the same page about what TS is, let's talk about why you would want to use it.