1. Flow : Flow is developed and maintained by Facebook. It is a static type checker, designed to quickly find errors in JavaScript applications. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s not a compiler, but a checker. It can work without any type of annotations and it is very good at inferring types. To enable type checking in flow add // @flow at the top of the file. It checks types locally and doesn’t have a language server or type definitions like TypeScript. 2. TypeScript : TypeScript is an open-source object-oriented programming language. It was introduced on October 1st, 2012. It follows JavaScript syntactically but adds more features to it. It is a superset of JavaScript. It is launched and maintained by Microsoft under the license of Apache 2. It does not directly run on the browser and requires a compiler to compile and generate a TypeScript file.
Difference between Flow and TypeScript :
| S.No. | FLOW | TYPESCRIPT |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | It is developed by Facebook in 2014. | It is developed by Microsoft in 2012. |
| 2. | The main features of Flow are Precision, Real-time feedback, Easy to integrate, Reliability, Speed, High throughput, Path sensitivity, Low latency, Type inference, Easily understandable JavaScript patterns. | The main features of Typescript are Compile-time type checking, Enumerated type, Interfaces, Namespaces, Type annotations, Type erasure, Type inference, Generic, Tuples. |
| 3. | Its utility size is 68.4 MB. | Its utility size is 42.4 MB. |
| 4. | It is best choice we are working on React as it is easily integrated with babel and the already present infrastructure. | It is best choice when we are working on Angular 2 or higher versions. |
| 5. | It doesn’t really support encapsulation. | It supports encapsulation with public, private, protected modifiers and readonly since TypeScript 2.0. |
| 6. | It is only supported by React. | It is much better because it support major frontend frameworks like Vue, Angular, and Facebook’s own React. |
| 7. | It support very few library. | It support many library. |
| 8. | Along with the provision of static typing, it also provides us a wide range of inter-procedural analysis and develops an in-depth understanding of our code. | Along with the provision of static typing, it also provides us with great language services and appropriate tooling that includes code refactoring, navigation, and auto-completion. |
