Programming TypeScript: Making Your JavaScript Applications Scale

I wish more tech books were like this
I really, really enjoyed this book. I came away feeling both knowledgeable and enthusiastic about TypeScript.1. It’s perfectly paced for the seasoned programmer who wants to learn TypeScript fast, without getting bogged down in basic programming concepts.2. The explanations are clear. There were times when I had to read a section a couple of times to understand it, particularly around advanced concepts in the type system; but this was generally due to the material itself, not to the manner in which it was communicated.3. It was very thorough. I came away feeling that I had all the language and ecosystem-related knowledge required to use TypeScript confidently in production.4. It covered not only the language, but also the ecosystem. The build system for TypeScript projects is inherently more complicated than for many other languages. There are many knobs and levers that can be adjusted. This book provides very clear and helpful advice about how to configure your build based on the requirements of your project.5. The author has an enthusiastic writing style which contains just the right amount of humour to keep things “bouncing along” without getting too dry. For some, perhaps the little jokes throughout might be too much, but I kind of appreciated it.6. Lastly, but absolutely not least, the typesetting, layout and physical dimensions of the book were perfect for comfortable reading on the train, at home on the couch, wherever. Many technical books with solid content are let down by writing that’s too small, margins that are too narrow, or simply by the book itself being too large to comfortably hold and read. I was very grateful for the sensible typesetting and dimensions of this book.

Very good book received in good condition. Took 12 days to receive it.
Took 12 days to get the book and I have Amazon Prime. Ordered 9/19 and didn’t receive until 9/30. The book was in good condition

In-depth, thorough explanation
Prerequisites: You need to know JavaScript first.If you want an advanced, thorough explanation of TypeScript, this book is a good choice.

Lacks depth
This book is not for a serious TypeScript learner.I didn’t find many topics, many were glossed over.No getters/setters on classes, the async/await chapter section was a joke, this pretty important topic was dismissed as “just a syntactic sugar” without giving any explanation of how the transpile process handles it.The casual style of the author looks OK at first, but becomes annoying fast.Creating good abstractions is clearly not author’s forte, Keanu Reeves and Star Trek referrals clearly don’t help me understand type nuances better.The book should either be written in a more concise way or be thicker. Too much blabber in between every topic don’t make it a good reference book that I’d be using in the future.Verdict:1. Read once2. Put on the top shelf and forget about it.3. Use the TypeScript official documentation.

This is a great book, but I wouldn’t recommend it as your very first TypeScript (TS) book unless you’re already very senior with BOTH ES6 AND a strongly typed coding language (C#, Java, Swift, etc.).If you’re at that level, this book is perfect for you. The author methodically covers all the language features of TS from bottom to top, with a really dense signal-to-noise ratio on almost every page (the occasional slightly-too-long geek-humor aside notwithstanding).IF you are NOT already senior in both ES6 and a typed language, I wouldn’t start with this book. Why not? I say that because the author’s writing style is very much targeted at those who already know all the vocabulary, and the usage/value/purpose, of most features he explains along the way. This is NOT a book that will teach you what these features are if you don’t already know. He gives plenty of really good code examples, but as those features get more advanced you may struggle if you don’t already have an understanding of the general meaning/purpose/value of those features. It’s a book that assumes you know _a_few_ other typed languages already, and you just want to learn how to do the things you’re already familiar with, using TypeScript.While I _am_ very experienced with JS/ES6, and I _have_ worked with typed languages before, I’ll admit I’m new to generic types (i.e. these guys… , , etc.). I learned from this book that these are central to TS, and that they’re a super powerful abstraction feature. But honestly, I’m still super confused about how they work, how I’ll properly use them, etc.This book didn’t quite get me there with “generics”, so I need to do some more reading (and hacking) to figure that all out. Since this is my first TS book, that’s fine – but while generics are the only thing I had real trouble with, unless you’re experienced with types in general there may a few other things that leave you confused after reading this book.Final word: This is a GREAT BOOK – but it’s NOT for beginners. If you’re not a ninja already, learn ES6 and TS basics elsewhere first, then come to this book when you’re ready for that one permanent reference book to keep on your desk until TypeScript goes out of style.

 

I loved how book covered the topics, starting from the type system and all its little corner cases and how there is explanations of how the language had to get those corner cases to be able to actually exist.