Overall I think that learning TypeScript has been a rather enjoyable experience. The website we were given in order to learn it was pretty starightforward in teaching us the basics and I look forward to learning more about the applications of this language. After doing some research, I found that TypeScript was released in 2012, making it a rather new language, which to me is very interesting. Most of the main languages we are taught in school are the most popular and applicable langauges such as Java/JavaScript, Python, and C which makes sense seeing as much of the technological applications we have and use are run on those languages. So I find it nice to learn one that is newer to the space and be grateful to have the experience of learning a new language.
Most of the coding experience I have is mostly from school work, starting from high school. I first learned JavaScript using a website that allowed us to use blocks of premade code and just switch the order, for the purpose of simplicity in learning. The next year I took the AP CS course my school offered and we learned Java, which was mainly building off of what was taught in the prerequisite class in the year prior. Following that was my college experience with continuing with Java, learning Python for my discrete math classes, learning C and C++, and now I am a third year in college and am learning TypeScript. I wouldn’t say that my skills in coding are super extensive, as I feel like I only know the basics of each language. But thankfully TypeScript is very similar to JavaScript and Java in terms of syntax and formatting so I think that was really helpful in learning.
I feel like TypeScript is very useful in software engineering as it covers some of the areas that JavaScript lacks, such as building enterprise level applications, as stated by Altexsoft. With it being such a new language I feel like it really had the time to reflect on past languages and what they may have fallen short on.
In terms of althetic software engineering I think that while it may be a bit stress inducing, it is worth the effort, as it builds good habits of practice and efficiency. Similar to the practice WOD’s we have, it guides us to be more efficient and effective coders given the time limit. That pushes us to learn more creative ways to apply what we know so instead of doing things in a long and tedious way, we can code in ways that will take up less time and space, as well as the code itself running more efficiently. However I would be lying if I said that it was stressful having a time limit and having the exercises be all or nothing, as that leaves no room for error or improvement once the time is up. But overall I feel the benefits outweigh the drawbacks as this is a time for learning, and the best way to learn is to make mistakes and learn from them, and in this way it will show us more practical real workld practices.