Static type checking
Languages TypeScript or Flow are very suitable for frontend development.
Fewer bugs in run-time, because bugs are caught in compile-time
Highly productive developer experience
Better onboarding of new developers
Easier to refactor and debug
TypeScript
TypeScript is very popular these days. It’s developed by Microsoft, Angular from version 2 is completely written in it, backend developers love it and it’s become a more common language for libraries.
TypeScript is not, in fact, a programming language. It’s a typed superset of JavaScript. This means that any JavaScript is a TypeScript, and TypeScript adds extra features into JavaScript (besides types, ES6 syntax and JSX support). TypeScript is compiled into plain JavaScript.
Benefits
Common and with a high adoption rate within a large community
Developed by Microsoft
Great tooling and integration in code editors or IDEs
A lot of typings for 3rd party libraries available
Risks
A bit of a harder learning curve, especially for junior developers
Potentially hard configuration (you must know what are you doing)
The official documentation is not up to date
Before
babel7, compiler must be used with TypeScript (tsc); this makes adoption and upgrading to TypeScript complexRequires a build step, which sometimes isn’t suitable—or the overhead just isn’t worth it
Flow
Flow is developed by Facebook and used to be much more suitable for React than TypeScript. Flow had better support for React from the very beginning. Integration to an existing project was much easier and more straightforward than TypeScript. But these days, Flow is losing its popularity.
Benefits
Feels more like JavaScript
You can simply add types to a file by adding @flow annotation at the beginning of a file
Risks
TypeScript is more performant and stable
A lot of memory issues and editor integration problems
People behind Flow are more focused on ReasonML last days
ReasonML
ReasonML is a JavaScript-like syntax for OCaml that can be compiled into JavaScript. It’s quite new but looks very promising.
Benefits
Super fast and stable
Fully typed and functional language
Can compile to any platform supported by OCaml or JavaScript
Risks
Small community compared to JavaScript or TypeScript
Difficult learning path
Usually not preferred by clients because there aren’t enough developers
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