Why Angular? Why TypeScript? Why Firebase?

I develop web apps. My business depends on tools that provide the most product with the least amount of effort. Ruby on Rails and Meteor have been good to me in the past. Here’s why I now focus on developing apps with Angular, TypeScript, and Firebase.

Why Angular?

Angular 4 is still very new and there are only a handful of fully-fledged production apps to showcase. It’s a platform designed that can produce apps for web, mobile web, native mobile, and native desktop. That means one codebase for multiple platforms - that’s huge.

Angular takes some time to learn. To take full advantage of the framework, you will need to understand reactive extensions (RxJS observables, subjects, etc.). Thankfully, Angular has a large and growing community of developers sharing knowledge and creating NPM packages that solve common problems.

Bottom Line: Although it has a learning curve, Angular produces fast flexible apps for any platform.

Why TypeScript?

TypeScript complies (or transpiles technically) to plain JavaScript, so you can just think of it as “Javascript, but better”. It is 100% backward-compatible with vanilla JS, so you can completely opt out of its features if you’d like - but you won’t. It’s main benefit is optional static typing LINK. Static typing may seem like a pointless extra step on smaller projects, but as your app grows in complexity, it will help with debugging. TypeScript has an awesome auto-complete feature built in that essentially forces you to write code that works.

Bottom Line: TypeScript is easy to learn and will help you write maintainable JavaScript.

Why Firebase?

Firebase is a backend as a service (BaaS) that was acquired by Google in 2014. It simplifies three common web app features that often require significant development time. 1. User Authentication 2. File Storage and Retrieval. 3. NoSQL Database Integration. 4. Cloud messaging (native mobile) 5. Hosting and Deployment. It’s free at lower volume usage, so you can get your app off the ground without risking any money. When you’re a startup or soloprenuer, your main concern is getting an minimum viable product out quickly - Firebase helps you do this.

Bottom Line: Firebase is inexpensive, scalable, and incredibly user-friendly.