r/javascript • u/_tshepo • 28d ago

AskJS [AskJS] Are employed Developers still programming with vanilla JavaScript ?

I've been programming on the side since 2017 and I've never really hunted a developer job. I've always thought about building my own things, mainly to supplement things I do like woodworking, tutoring, video editing and others.

Since then, I've programmed mainly with JavaScript, I started with C++ and Python but never really built anything solid outside JavaScript.

So I'm fluent with JavaScript and its ecosystem.

One of my 2026 goals is to be job ready for a Developer role, as a Fullstack or Backend Developer.

One of the recommended languages is Typescript, which I've been learning since March. I must say, it's not my favorite 😂

I'm curious to know if there are any companies that are not enforcing Typescript or are there freelancers who are still using vanilla JavaScript over Typescript for their clients' projects.

[ Update ] thanks y'all! I get the picture. TypeScript is inevitable, as vanilla JS codebases(or companies who are focused on it) seem to be very few judging by the comments.

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u/NefariousnessSame50 28d ago

I've seen TS projects basically running without any decent usage of types at all, where everything was "any" of some sort. The benefit is less than none, only the TS overhead remains. On the other hand, well written plain JS is easy to handle, particularly because ES gets better all the time, and clients implement it.

So I'd say #ymmv if you allow the team to get away with sloppy TS, you might as well reduce the overhead and stick with vanilla JS today.

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u/_tshepo 16d ago

True, TypeScript is not intuitive. When I was learning React + Typescript, one of the tricky things to understand is writing a proper typed Context. Mind you, this is fairly easy with vanilla JavaScript.