Hi, I'm Blake Tarter.

TypeScript is a statically-typed superset of JavaScript that enables developers to focus more on building sound systems with fewer runtime errors. This upfront investment in the development process is a tradeoff that has a net benefit to the quality of any product. It allows the compiler to catch syntax errors and other common issues allowing the developer to focus on the bespoke problem they are solving.

React is one of the myriad front-end JavaScript frameworks, and to be honest they each achieve roughly the same goal. However, the difference in each is how familiar you are with them and the way they allow you to build the UI. In this regard I think React allows you to build interfaces in a way that equates with how they are designed and how we think about them intuitively. The way data flows is predictable and flexible. I love that React uses existing language features instead of inventing magic syntax.

To many developers functional programming is very much opposed to object-oriented programming. Although, I think a lot of the traits of functional-programming can be beneficial when applied even to object-oriented systems. Immutability in non-performance limited areas can be incredibly useful to eliminate programming errors and show intent. Declarative code can be easier to understand and read which can lead to fewer errors. Pure functions can be used to build easy to reuse parts of any codebase.

GraphQL is intriguing to me because it's a different way to think about communicating with the back-end. Having a separate schema file that enforces type-safety and other validations on both the client-side and back-end is wonderful, and representing the data as a graph more closely aligns with how the data is used on the client-side. I've used it in production on a couple of projects and I've had positive experiences so far.