Microsoft makes TypeScript 2.0 generally available
Microsoft is releasing the final version of its TypeScript 2.0 superset of JavaScript on Sept. 22.
"TypeScript is JavaScript that scales," is Microsoft's tag line for TypeScript. It's a superset of JavaScipt that compiles to plain JavaScript.
Microsoft took the wraps off TypeScript 1.0 in 2012. From the get-go, TypeScript was an open-source project, available under the Apache 2.0 license. The father of TypeScript is Anders Hejlsberg, who also is the father of C#.
Microsoft officials touted TypeScript as showing developers "the potential of JavaScript when combined with static types". TypeScript 1.0 provided compile-time error checking and various editor tools.
Since then, Microsoft has delivered several point releases of the product and migrated the TypeScript repository to GitHub. TypeScript 2.0 brings close ECMAScript spec alignment, increased support for JavaScipt libraries and tool, and support for all major editors, Microsoft execs said.
Moving forward, Microsoft plans to focus on enhancing the TypeScript language service and set of tooling.
Users can download TypeScript 2.0 for Visual Studio 2015 (with Update 3), get it with NuGet; start using it in Visual Studio Code, or install it with npm, according to Microsoft's blog post. Microsoft officials also said Visual Studio '15 -- the next version of VS which might ultimately be christened Visual Studio 2016 -- preview users will be able to get their hands on TypeScript 2.0 in the next preview release.
TypeScript made the top 15 most-used languages on GitHub's list, according to an Octoverse 2016 report from last week.