Learning TypeScript Deeply – Kick-off

In the past several years work has taken me closer to the realm of people and their problems than to shifting bits. For a nerdy programmer like me, it has taken a sustained learning and rewiring to be reasonably effective in a role different from writing code. A more management role has also meant that my learning focus is different and while I have been following technical developments very closely (especially in the JavaScript world), have helped with a lot of technical decisions, have read a ton of code, and even have written a non-trivial amount, I haven’t learned a programming language deeply for several years. Maybe since Clojure & ClojureScript in 2013–2015.

Six years is startlingly long time given my previously dense learning history. I am not sad – change is the only constant and I have enjoyed the people challenges as much as the purely technical ones. Still, the lockdown in combination with the realization that the problem-solving and regular surprises involved in learning a programming language are something that brings be a lot of joy meant it’s time to choose the next language.

Why TypeScript?

I have dabbled with TypeScript before, even wrote a few thousand lines worth of a hiring stats visualization system that ended up abandoned. But this experience was closer to a deterrent of learning more about the language than helped. Here are my reasons for picking up TypeScript:

• The dichotomy of having the same codebase and same patterns exist in either typed or untyped form are every alluring. I am super curious what will be the effect on gradual typing on my thinking about problems.
• After years of using generic (even if powerful) tools for my languages of choice, the first-class TypeScript support in VSCode is exciting.
• People. I don’t know much about the community (yet), but I have enjoyed previous work by Anders Hejlsberg, like Delphi and Turbo Pascal. He’s still number one contributor, which is impressive. Last, but not least, Stefan was excited about it 🙂

How?

My learning strategy is usually to often alternate between top-down approach (first principles first, high-level knowledge) and bottom-up (low-level knowledge, often trivial). This often means alternating between a book, paper, theory, principles on the subject and a lot of hacking, tinkering, trying things out, doing, digging into source code, learning how something works in detail.

Here are the resources I have on my short-list and I am starting with them tonight:

• Book: Programming TypeScript – sounds like a good basics book.
• Book: Effective TypeScript – bit more advanced.
• Book: Programming with Types – newer, wildcard, hopefully more general typing strategies using TypeScript.
• Code Exercises: Gary Bernhardt’s interactive TypeScript course.
• GitHub: TypeScript repository – the code for the compiler can always be handy 🙂

Follow further progress and learnings here 🙂

What are your favorite TypeScript resources? Should have I picked something else?