As someone with a solid understanding of JavaScript and Ruby but not much of other programming languages, I’ve always wanted to learn more about a toolset many JavaScript developers are praising: TypeScript.

Another relatively new tool I have noticed being thrown around in the dev world is GraphQL.

With very little bandwidth to dive deep into both tools, I was delighted to find a comprehensive FREE video tutorial that covers both topics:

Building Your First GraphQL Server with Node and TypeScript

Even though the course is 2.5 hours long, it actually took me at least double the amount of time to complete. And it was time well spent.

In addition to getting the gist of TypeScript and GraphQL, you would also be greeted with a beginner-friendly walkthrough of code environment setup and some Node package configurations.

Here are 4 key takeaways from my journey with the course:

TypeScript is a Typechecker for JavaScript

Simply put, TypeScript is a typed extension of JavaScript.

Because JavaScript is weakly (or statically) typed, e.g. one variable can be reassigned to different data types, it helps to have a strongly-typed superset to reduce production issues where data types were misplaced.

TypeScript is that superset. Introduced by Microsoft in 2012, it serves as a development tool to help JavaScript developers avoid painful bugs and make code easier to follow.

TypeScript will eventually be transformed into valid JavaScript during the compilation process, as clients and servers do NOT recognize TypeScript.

#programming #coding #graphql #typescript #javascript