!rant

So I just came back from an interview and the job turned out to be another desktop app to web migration...

I do do web development but still prefer C#, other compiled languages with strict syntax checking, and don't run in a web browser.

But it seems everything is going to JS these days and the web....

Should I just go all in on web dev and I guess I can use Cordova or React Native if I want a desktop app?

Typescript or elm among others could probably satisfy your desire for strongly typed goodness. As always it's the rest of the team you have to look out for...

If you're comfortable with C#, typescript as a language will help you feel a little bit more comfortable, but nothing will prepare you for the JavaScript Ecosystem of madness. Full disclosure, I've only done University C# and have been doing full-stack JavaScript for the majority of my professional career.

React Native is for native mobile apps. Try electron.atom.io for desktop apps written in JS.

@tytho Well I do some MEAN so yea I've seen the insane amount of libraries. And then I think there's also bower/CSS stuff, haven't really used that though.

Is there like a set of core/commonly used/must know libraries?

@allanx2000 for front end, webpack and babel are good ones to know, but they have some pretty complex setup. Take a look at create-react-app. It configured webpack and babel for you. Even though it's made for react, you can just strip out the react part and leverage the react-scripts part of it. I use create-react-app on most of my front end projects now because it takes care of the configuration for my build process.