In this tutorial, I will assume you have some programming experience with HTML, CSS and JavaScript, but no experience with TypeScript, React, or Node.js.

I’ll give you an overview of the JavaScript ecosystem as I understand it. I’ll explain why I think TypeScript and React (or Preact) are your best bet for making web apps. And I’ll help you start a project without unnecessary extras.

In section 2, we will discuss how and why to add extras to your project, if you decide you want them.

Even if you were planning to use a different web server (or to use no web server and just double-click an HTML file), everybody seems to assume you’ll have Node.js installed. So you may as well go ahead and install node.js which gives you npm as a side-effect.

Node.js isn’t just a web server — it can also run command-line apps written in JavaScript. In that sense, the TypeScript compiler is a Node.js app!