Three years ago, we introduced TypeScript, a typed superset of JavaScript for application development at scale offering compile-time type checking and richer tooling integration.
Since then, we’ve seen great adoption and usage of TypeScript across a wide range of projects and applications – from Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite to Mozilla’s Shumway project and the great Asana web application. At the same time, the ecosystem of frameworks and tools partners around TypeScript has also grown quickly – from tools for Eclipse developed by Palantir to TypeScript support in JetBrains’ WebStorm and the over 700 developers who have contributed to the DefinitelyTyped project.
TypeScript + Angular 2
Today, we’re excited to talk about another great framework partner we are working with.
For the last several months, the Microsoft TypeScript and Google Angular teams have been working closely together. Today at ng-conf in Salt Lake City, the Angular and the TypeScript teams are unveiling the first fruits of that collaboration. We’re excited to announce that we have converged the TypeScript and AtScript languages, and that Angular 2, the next version of the popular JavaScript library for building web sites and web apps, will be developed with TypeScript.
Working closely with a rich library like Angular has helped TypeScript to evolve additional language features that simplify end-to-end application development, including annotations, a way to add metadata to class declarations for use by dependency injection or compilation directives.
Even more than the language innovations and library that have been built by the two teams, I’m proud of the productive relationship and partnership we’ve built between the TypeScript and Angular teams. Both teams are looking forward to continuing to move TypeScript and JavaScript forward together in the future, including working with the ECMAScript standards body on the future of types in JavaScript.
Next Steps for TypeScript
Since the release of TypeScript 1.0 last year, the TypeScript team has been hard at work making further improvements to the language and tools.
- As the ECMAScript 6 standard solidifies, we’ve been adding ES6 syntax and features to TypeScript.
- We’ve also been building user-requested features, such as the ECMAScript 7 async/await to make writing asynchronous code dramatically easier.
- And we’ve continued to invest in our architecture, making common build tasks up to 4x faster than they were in TypeScript 1.0.
You’ll see the results of all this work in the upcoming TypeScript 1.5 and future versions.
In addition to the work on the language, we’ve continued to improve Visual Studio’s powerful environment for building TypeScript apps with type-supplemented IntelliSense, go to definition, refactor/rename, project templates to get you started, and integrated build support. If you have Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 or beyond, you have TypeScript already.
Conclusion
It’s great to see the continued growth in the TypeScript ecosystem, and I’m particularly excited to be partnering with Google’s Angular team to align our work on TypeScript and Angular 2.
You can learn more about today’s Angular announcements and keep up with TypeScript on GitHub .
Namaste!