QCon San Francisco 2021 November 1-5, 2021 | | TypeScript for Enterprise Developers

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Abstract

With TypeScript, the JavaScript + Node ecosystem becomes a serious contender for backend development. This talk describes why: maturity, strong language features, and Enterprise-quality open source tools. Once you know how cool and fun it is, I'll reveal some less-pleasant surprises. Get the information I wish I had when moving from Java/Scala to TypeScript. If you're new to Node or to TypeScript, or if you're experienced but still frustrated, this session will widen your development world and strengthen your superpowers.

Question:

Who's the audience for this talk?

Answer:

The audience for this talk is Java/C# or Scala developers who might write or change a Node.js application.

Question:

Why TypeScript?

Answer:

TypeScript is an incredibly useful language. The type system is more expressive and less restrictive than Java or Scala. It's friendly with JavaScript -- all JS is valid TS -- which makes it compatible with tons of libraries and millions of people.

Question:

What are you going to focus on in this talk (and how... do you plan to walk through code or talk serverside TypeScript from a high level)?

Answer:

In this talk, I'll show you some of the things that make TypeScript awesome, like the flexible type systems and that you can test before making it compile. Then you'll hear about some things that make TypeScript painful. I'll show how Node and npm work differently from the JVM (or CLR), and some of the nasty surprises I hit learning this language.

Question:

What are the big key takeaways?

Answer:

You'll take away some reasons to be excited about writing Node apps, and some precautions so you'll understand it more quickly than I did.

Question:

Why did you propose this session?

Answer:

When I moved from Java/Scala to working in TypeScript on Node, I found many beautiful surprises in the language, and also some nasty ones. Node is not the JVM, and npm is not maven. In this session, I'll shortcut through my year of discovery. TypeScript is incredibly useful, and with a little background, it can be useful to even more people.

Speaker: Jessica Kerr

Polyglot Functional Developer @atomist

Jessica Kerr (unique ID: @jessitron) develops development automation at Atomist. After a dozen years in Java, she branched out to Scala and Clojure and Ruby and Elm and more. Nowadays she works in TypeScript, on tools to help developers automate more of our own work -- DevOps is only the beginning! Jessica lives in St. Louis, MO with four humans and two felines. Her Pokémon Go trainer code is 5431 5140 6916.