TypeScript 0.9 released

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/typescript/archive/2013/06/18/announcing-typescript-0-9.aspx

by ixtraz • 13 years ago

158 76 13 years ago

blogs.msdn.com

ixtraz13• 13 years ago

TypeScript is a language for application-scale JavaScript development. TypeScript is a typed superset of JavaScript that compiles to plain JavaScript. Any browser. Any host. Any OS. Open Source.

Btw, I've used it a lot, feel free to ask any questions.

turingbook• 13 years ago

I wonder if there are any ugly things or traps in programming TypeScript.

michaelwww6• 13 years ago

The JavaScript gotchas will still getcha, such as variable hoisting. I tend to forget they are still there when working in TypeScript, but that's my fault.

ixtraz13• 13 years ago

When you comfortable with JavaScript, there is nothing can scare you in TypeScript.

The only thing is - to get a best you need to prepare. If you using some library, I should find (or write, or generate) proper definition file for this library (Interface). But when you get all together - you have a lot of happy hours of coding :)

tieTYT2• 13 years ago

I want this so bad, but I want to type it in my IDE of choice: Intellij IDEA/(or Eclipse, to play the devil's advocate).

Is there any legal reason why someone couldn't create a plugin for those Java ides to compile TypeScript?

inklesspen• 13 years ago

There is Typescript language support for Emacs and Sublime Text, so there shouldn't really be a problem there; someone just has to do it.

SystemOut• 13 years ago

IntelliJ has support for Typescript. I'm not sure if this is the level of support you're looking for but it seems like it should be sufficient.

http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/webhelp/typescript-support.htm...

tieTYT2• 13 years ago

Whoa, thank you sir. I assumed it didn't support it because I couldn't find a Typescript plugin when I searched their repository. I didn't think it would just be built in.

giulianob• 13 years ago

The TypeScript tooling is completely open source (and actually written in TypeScript itself). So yeah I think we should see more support for TypeScript as it gains more traction.

pjmlp6• 13 years ago

Aren't you aware that support is already available since version 12.1.0?

http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/whatsnew/

http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/webhelp/typescript-support.htm...

ixtraz13• 13 years ago

I will recommend you to try WebStorm Trial by IntelliJ (http://www.jetbrains.com/webstorm/)

This is the same as IDEA, but focused on Web Development and releasing new features much-much faster.

But best support offers MIcrosoft's Visual Studio. You could try Visual Studio Web Express (http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/products/visual-st...) if you are using Windows. It's totally free.

egonschiele2• 13 years ago

I am very excited by Typescript. I think JS was badly in need of some better typing. This release looks like it adds a lot: overloading on constants, enums, and generics will all lead to better typing. Never thought I'd say it, but thanks, Microsoft!

ktavera• 13 years ago

We've been building a large scale application in Typescript for about 6 months and it is great. These new features in 0.9 are awesome.

euroclydon• 13 years ago

This is good work! I hope they make an update to Visual Studio that supports all source maps, not just those generated by the TypeScript compiler.

ixtraz13• 13 years ago

For node.js developers:

If you don't want to recompile it every time, you could just use better-require module: https://github.com/olalonde/better-require

ixtraz13• 13 years ago

Or if you want to do it automatically, you could use Mimosa.js as well (http://mimosajs.com/)

nailer• 13 years ago

I saw the original announcement of Typescript at JSconf EU last year. It was an interesting moment: everyone was expecting another Dart, or less (there's a sea of Macs and most professional JS devs experience of Microsoft is IE) but stayed to listen to the presentation out of respect for the creator, who also made Delphi and C#.

Pretty much everyone came out impressed. Typescript is just JS with type hints, and neat warnings if you send a function something which its signature doesn't expect.

You can make a JS project a Typescript one immediately, adding type hints as you go, which for large projects is damn useful. The output, however, is pure regular old JS.

It's just like a CSS preprocessor, but for JS - transparently adding some optional awesomeness.

It works on Linux/Mac and SublimeText (albeit you don't get all the VS Intellisense stuff IIRC) too. I'm looking forward to trying it on a new project.

ixtraz13• 13 years ago

It seems to be very close to CoffeeScript, but without this ugly Ruby syntax (for me).

klibertp2• 13 years ago

It's completely unrelated to CoffeeScript, as CS does practically no static analysis and generally CS does almost nothing more than pure JS. What it does is it translates some keywords to a chunks of JavaScript code. If JS had macros - sweet.js! - Coffee would be completely unneeded.

TypeScript is entirely different thing. It adds a layer of static analysis to the language, which does not end in the code that actually runs. Generally everything you type in Coffee has an equivalent in compiled JS; it is not so with TypeScript, where you can write pages of code which won't be visible in the compiled JS.

CS and TS have different goals and are different things, and the only thing they have in common is that they both "transpile"/compile some language to another. Hardly a similarity that makes them very close.

Actually I would appreciate TypeScript implementation on top of Coffee (or the other way around, whichever would be simpler). There is a dialect of CS that supports contracts (you really, really should start using contracts anyway), but that's yet another thing that cannot hope to replace static verification of certain things in programs.

fordi• 13 years ago

I disagree. 1. Coffeescript is far from ugly, and also not particularly similar to Ruby :p 2. Typescript includes types and brackets. Coffeescript does not. 3. Icedcoffescript includes async/defer keywords. I include this last point only as a result of a personal perspective that if you're going to use coffeescript, you might as well use icedcoffeescript.

recuter• 13 years ago

Typescript is in my peripheral vision so far but that really makes me want to look into it properly.

How do you think does it fit in with ES6? I feel like we're coming to a point in time where there should be a major shift in how we write javascript in a modern way -- so far my thought process has been that Coffescript is a nice stopgap before ES6 and the dust has almost settled enough to write ES6 first sorta..

Bit of a ramble. Interesting times.

ixtraz13• 13 years ago

They are aiming to bring ES6 into today development so they looks into ES6 specs very often.

sluukkonen• 13 years ago

ES6 is very important for them. For example, classes and modules in Typescript are essentially lifted directly from ES6, and they aim to remain compatible with ES6 as it evolves.

michaelwww6• 13 years ago

TypeScript is far better suited than CoffeeScript if your goal is ES6. TypeScript currently outputs as ES3 or ES5 depending on a flag. ES6 to follow. It's very much up in the air with CoffeeScript.

mseepgood• 13 years ago

It works on Linux/Mac and SublimeText

A programming language works with a text editor? Wow!

ixtraz13• 13 years ago

Nope.

It is running on Linux/Mac/Windows (node.js module).

And already has support in all major IDE (Visual Studio, IntelliJ) and text editors (Sublime, Emacs, ..)

stusmall• 13 years ago

I had no idea this was the baby of the Delphi/C# guy. I am super excited now.

dham• 13 years ago

There's a plugin for Adobe Brackets too.

https://github.com/tomsdev/brackets-typescript-code-intel

Still early

marshray6• 13 years ago

Typescript is closely integrated with Node.js at this point.

So there's this related open source project seeking to optimize the performance of Node.js apps running on IIS and hosting them on Azure. https://github.com/tjanczuk/iisnode/wiki We've seen some interesting performance gains by supplanting Node.js's HTTP implementation with the in-kernel HTTP stack, http.sys. http://tomasz.janczuk.org/2012/08/the-httpsys-stack-for-node...

Disclosure: I work for Microsoft. I personally found this interesting.

marshray6• 13 years ago

Looks like there's an interview video just up with Anders Hejlsberg and the Typescript team.

http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Charles/Anders-Hejlsberg-Stev...

michaelwww6• 13 years ago

I like it that Anders said "We've had kind of a mantra - we don't mangle your code."

ww520• 13 years ago

This looks very interesting. Any chance it would compile to asm.js? That would be awesome.

ixtraz13• 13 years ago

They are going to make it happen.

http://typescript.codeplex.com/discussions/438243

dangoor2• 13 years ago

The trouble is that, at the moment, asm.js is not a garbage collected environment, whereas TypeScript is much closer to JS than it is to C.

Static typing alone is not sufficient to make asm.js a good target for a language, I think.

DonnyV• 13 years ago

I've been burned way too many times with Microsoft and there technology. I suggest that no one build any long lasting apps with this. They will dump it when something new and shiny comes along. Unless its based on C# or uses Visual Studio don't use it.

egonschiele2• 13 years ago

Ouch. Can you give me some examples? A lot of companies have this issue: Google and Apple both dump tech left and right. If it's open source software and it's popular, though, there's a good chance the community will make sure it sticks around.

pjmlp6• 13 years ago

Microsoft is no different than any other commercial vendor in terms of tooling.

marshray6• 13 years ago

I now work at Microsoft, but was previously a long time developer in the Microsoft ecosystem (primarily C++). I would be the last guy to disagree with your experience and I am telling everyone who will listen internally what it was like to be on the outside.

But the Typescript project has some things going for it:

1. It's open source.

2. It's closely aligned with EC6, the upcoming Javascript standard.

3. It's compatible with existing Javascript libraries.

4. It's useful as it is, to add type checking to Javascript. It doesn't require a massive growing ecosystem to remain viable.

5. The compiler outputs standard idiomatic Javascript, which you could take and run with if you no longer wanted Typescript.

And, yes, there's a Visual Studio plugin for it if that's your cup of tea.

pjmlp6• 13 years ago

And, yes, there's a Visual Studio plugin for it if that's your cup of tea.

Only if you are lucky enough to be using 2012 already.

sivam• 13 years ago

Microsoft didn't kill Silverlight, the iPad killed Silverlight. As for VB6, I think many here would agree that it was better off killed. You can still run VB6 apps on even Windows 8 though.

Guvante• 13 years ago

Which itself could be traced back to Adobe trying to make Flash -> native iOS a thing. Apple's process is too expensive to manage the flood of games that would come from that.

akgoel• 13 years ago

I disagree. Microsoft killed Silverlight. Your iPad argument means that we should all just skip native development and stick with HTML5.

Either Silverlight or WPF should be the favored Windows desktop development environment. Instead, they are both EOL and the incomplete Metro environment is the current way to do Windows desktop development.

In fact, if you are a Microsoft developer, you've lost Win32, MFC, ATL, WinForms, WPF, and Silverlight. The Windows desktop developer currently is waiting to see how Metro improves.

camus• 13 years ago

Microsoft killed Silverlight like Adobe killed Flash. Ipad killed nothing. And it is not the first product MS kills. they did it and will do again and again ,... that's the price to pay when relying on closed technologies.

michaelwww6• 13 years ago

You should call Microsoft and tell them what they will do in the future. They could use a person with your powers of prediction.

serkanyersen• 13 years ago

is it just me or Microsoft is slowly converting Javascript into C#? Don't get me wrong I like typescript but next thing you know we have .NETJS floating around :)

miohtama3• 13 years ago

I think major difference here is that Microsoft actually tries to play nice with the existing ecosystem

- Follow EcmaScript6 development path

- Using NodeJS as the base for the language service

- Providing plugins for various editors

- Be superset of JavaScript - you can (almost) directly drop any JS code to TypeScript

After all these years it almost looks like Microsoft has learnt its lessons and sees there is more than Windows Server out there.

miohtama3• 13 years ago

Actually my major grief is that they are using Microsoft's Codeplex software repository services which feel little old fashioned and cumbersome after all Github hipstering :)

michaelwww6• 13 years ago

I use both TypeScript and Dart for different uses cases (Dart lacks IE8 support) and both are a joy to use compared to POJS (plain old JavaScript.)

RickyShaww• 13 years ago

This is great. The generics seems to be a very useful feature.

dangoor2• 13 years ago

For people looking for an editor in which to try out TypeScript, I'll note that there's a neat looking community-written TypeScript extension[1] for Brackets[2]. (I work on Brackets).

I've been using dynamically typed languages consistently since 2005, but I'm curious to give TypeScript a try to see how it feels. The last statically typed language I used was Java (2004), and that was not a wholly pleasant experience.

[1] https://github.com/tomsdev/brackets-typescript-code-intel [2]: http://brackets.io/

michaelwww6• 13 years ago

I really like the Brackets editor, but the TypeScript extension is still 0.8 isn't it?

programminggeek• 13 years ago

I think TypeScript is a cool idea, but I actually want runtime type checking. I don't know how many developers code with "design by contract" where you have contracts enforced not just at compile time, but at runtime. It allows for some incredibly smart, pluggable systems. I really don't know why there isn't more done with runtime type checking in various dynamic languages.

sunnyujjawal• 13 years ago

will try it also

zedzed• 13 years ago

Does anyone know of any good examples of larger scale TypeScript application architecture?

ixtraz13• 13 years ago

same as for JavaScript

ycner• 13 years ago

If the selling point for TypeScript is adding static types/analysis to JavaScript, do we expect that it is the trend that other popular dynamic languages e.g. python/ruby/php will likely follow?

bjhoops1• 13 years ago

The addition of export = is great. This was a glaringly obvious deficiency that I'm glad they resolved.

TypeScript 0.9 released

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