TypeScript Overview

JavaScript's journey to becoming a full-fledged programming language wasn’t smooth. It faced issues like lack of features, inconsistent implementations across browsers, and was often considered unfit for large-scale application development due to its dynamic and loosely typed nature. Developers and organizations started seeking solutions to these limitations and improve JavaScript’s capability to handle complex and large-scale development needs.

Several attempts were made to enhance JavaScript, introducing technologies like JScript by Microsoft and ActionScript by Adobe. ECMAScript, the standard upon which JavaScript is based, also underwent multiple revisions to incorporate new features and improvements, aiming to address JavaScript’s shortcomings.

Some developers turned to “transpiled” languages—languages that compile to JavaScript. These include CoffeeScript, which aimed to expose the good parts of JavaScript in a simple way, and Dart, developed by Google, designed to address the shortcomings of JavaScript and eventually replace it, though it never achieved widespread adoption.

In 2012, Microsoft introduced TypeScript, another transpiled language, designed to address the limitations of JavaScript for large-scale application development. TypeScript, developed by Anders Hejlsberg, the lead architect of C# at Microsoft, is a statically typed superset of JavaScript, meaning valid JavaScript code is also valid TypeScript code.

TypeScript introduced static typing, interfaces, generics, and other features absent in JavaScript, to allow developers to write more robust and maintainable code. TypeScript compiles down to plain JavaScript, ensuring compatibility with all JavaScript engines.

TypeScript was well-received by the developer community and saw rapid adoption. Its popularity was fueled by the rise of Angular, a prominent web development framework that adopted TypeScript as its primary language.