Our TypeScript Journey: Why Type Safety Matters
How TypeScript transformed our development process and reduced bugs in production.
Three years ago, we made the decision to migrate all our projects from JavaScript to TypeScript. It was a significant investment of time and resources, but looking back, it was one of the best technical decisions we've ever made.
The Problem We Were Solving
As our projects grew larger and our team expanded, we faced increasing challenges with runtime errors, difficulty refactoring, time wasted debugging type-related issues, incomplete documentation, and onboarding friction for new team members.
Early Skepticism
Not everyone was on board initially. Common concerns included slower development, verbose syntax, fighting the compiler, and "JavaScript is fine." We decided to run a pilot project to test these assumptions.
Measurable Impact
After a year of TypeScript across all projects:
- 62% reduction in type-related runtime errors
- 40% faster onboarding for new developers
- 25% fewer bugs making it to production
- 35% faster refactoring of large features
- Zero regrets from the team
Best Practices We've Learned
Start strict with strict mode enabled from day one. Use type inference to let TypeScript infer types when possible. Leverage union types for modeling real-world scenarios. Create utility types for common patterns. Don't fight the compiler—if TypeScript is complaining, there's usually a good reason.
The Bottom Line
TypeScript isn't just about catching bugs—it's about confidence. Confidence to refactor, confidence to onboard new developers, confidence to ship features faster.
The initial learning curve is real, but it's temporary. The benefits are permanent and compound over time. For any team building non-trivial JavaScript applications, TypeScript isn't just a good idea—it's essential.
Would we do it again? Absolutely. Would we go back to plain JavaScript? Never.