A Collection of TypeScript Guides and Cheatsheets

If you're just getting started with TypeScript, you may be wondering where to start your learning and what helpful cheatsheets may be out there. Being new to TypeScript myself, I thought I would share a brief history of my journey learning TypeScript and what resources I have found helpful.

Getting Into TypeScript for the First Time

I had heard a lot about TypeScript and had it on my study roadmap for early to mid 2020. However, I began interviewing with an opportunity here in Austin late last year that gave me a code test, and, knowing that they use TypeScript in their projects, I figured it would be a good idea to use TypeScript in this React project.

The first article I read was Robert Cooper's Get Started with TypeScript in 2019. This article covers a little bit of setup, but doesn't delve into it too deeply, which I liked. I was using Create React App which makes it easy to plug in TypeScript, so I didn't need a lot of help in setting up. What I needed help on was TypeScript itself. This article did a good job of breaking down the basics of TypeScript, and listing the most common types and annotations I needed to know. This article also lists three other resources at the end that are very helpful.

I first built the app in JavaScript as I was initially more concerned about getting an MVP done with all the features I wanted it to have. Then I switched the app over to TypeScript. As expected, I immediately had a lot of issues to fix. I went through and fixed the TypeScript issues, Googling where the article didn't cover something. I used VSCode that has really nice integration with TypeScript which also helped me to understand TypeScript better. What really helped convince me that TypeScript was a good thing was when I was able to catch some bugs I had in my code that I didn't even know I had (they would only have shown up in edge cases).

This project helped me land the job and I have been working in TypeScript at my new job since mid-January 2020. I am certainly no expert yet, but am learning more and becoming more comfortable with it every day! ✨