Statically typed Javascript : Why and How

In the last months I have found good experiences using Statically typed Javascript. For example, using React with Typescript. It helps a lot to build a robust Web development, with statically typed Javascript support, ready for a complex and enterprise-level projects.

TypeScript is maintained by Microsoft, but it’s not the only option for statically typed Javascript. Flow, from Facebook and Dart from Google are similar options among a long list of implementations.

Why so many “big companies” are doing really big efforts to introduce static typing in Javascript development in the last years?

Why static typing ?

Static typing have some good benefits over dynamic typing in a professional environment:

• Catching bugs earlier in the development cycle
• Better testing plans, more robust and specific
• Eliminate some classes of bugs in already deployed systems
• Improved code-assist (auto-complete, suggestions, documentation), linting (code quality and standards) and other tools for IDEs/Editors
• Enable compiler optimizations, refactoring and better minifying.
• Cleaner looking and self-explaining code.
• Better maintainability…