Microsoft introduces TypeScript, a superset of JavaScript
Microsoft has released a new development environment as TypeScript, which is said to help developers write more complex apps with the scripting language. The new programming language is translated into JavaScript so that it can support any browser. TypeScript is open source and its code source is licenced under Apache 2.0, which can be found on Codeplex.
According to S.Somasegar, VP of Microsoft developer division:
TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript that combines type checking and static analysis, explicit interfaces, and best practices into a single language and compiler. By building on JavaScript, TypeScript keeps you close to the runtime you’re targeting while adding only the syntactic sugar necessary to support large applications and large teams. Importantly, TypeScript enables great tooling experiences for JavaScript development, like those we’ve built for .NET and C and continue to innovate on with projects like “Roslyn”. This is true whether you’re writing client-side JavaScript to run on Windows, Internet Explorer, and other browsers and operating systems, or whether you’re writing server-side JavaScript to run on Windows Azure and other servers and clouds.
TypeScript syntax includes several proposed features of Ecmascript 6 (ES6), including classes and modules. TypeScript also provides to JavaScript programmers a system of optional type annotations. These type annotations are like the JSDoc comments found in the Closure system, but in TypeScript they are integrated directly into the language syntax. This integration makes the code more readable and reduces the maintenance cost of synchronizing type annotations with their corresponding variables. Microsoft has a Visual Studio plugin available ,which offers IDE support to TypeScript developers.
The creator of C#, Turbo Pascal and Delphi, Anders Hejlsberg has made the language possible along with Steve Lucco, the developer behind Microsoft’s Chakra JavaScript engine, and Luke Hoban, who is involved in ECMAScript standardisation.
For those who need to know more Hejlsberg has posted a video introducing the new features in TypeScript: