TypeScript vs JavaScript: Why I Finally Switched for Good

For years I wrote plain JavaScript with the excuse “it’s faster, no setup hassle.” Now, almost every new project I start goes straight to TypeScript — here’s why.

Errors get caught before runtime. A typo’d property name, a missed null check, a wrong argument type — all of that surfaces while I’m writing the code, not when a user clicks a button that breaks in production.

Autocomplete becomes far more useful. The editor knows exactly what shape of data I’m holding, so I don’t have to keep jumping to function definitions or guessing field names from an API response.

Refactoring becomes fearless. Rename a field or change an object’s shape, and the compiler immediately points out every place that needs updating. Without types, a big refactor is nerve-wracking — you’re always worried you missed something.

Types double as documentation. A function signature with clear types is documentation that never goes stale, unlike comments that are easy to leave outdated.

That doesn’t mean plain JavaScript is irrelevant — for a small one-off script or a prototype that’ll be thrown away in a day, the overhead of writing types isn’t always worth it. But for anything I’ll maintain for more than a week, TypeScript is now the default, not the exception.