carterehsmith

To me, this appears to be the way to go. Javascript + Typescript. Rather than deciding on weak (dynamic) typing vs strong typing, you pick both - incremental typing, as allowed by Typescript.

Want to bang up a quick solution, as in MVP? Use bare-bones Javascript, it is all valid Typescript. So you get dynamic typing. And if you do not care about strong typing, you can just stop right there.

But if you, some day, for whatever reason, decide that you feel like strong typing: good - you do not need to rewrite your app in a different language - just go back to your code and add some type info, here and there, at your leisure. As you do that, you get all the benefits of static typing, ie compiler showing you obvious type-related errors, correct keyword-completion, exact refactorings, etc etc.

Looks like the best of both worlds.

ryan-allen
When I bang something up, I'll use Visual Studio 2015 and Typescript from the get-go, now that I'm used to it I find it much faster due to the Intellisense on all my code, and all the browser code too (and anything else I add typings for [1]).

I find it way, way, way more productive than plain old JS development without an IDE.

[1] https://github.com/DefinitelyTyped/DefinitelyTyped

EDIT: I always turn off optional any types, so everything has to be type annotated, even if that means I simply cast to an explicit . I find that non trivial problems in JS become so much easier in TS due to the compiler and built-in refactoring tools. I can't think of anything negative to say about TS at all!!!