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TypeScript

Programming language and superset of JavaScript

Programming language and superset of JavaScript

FieldValue
nameTypeScript
logoTypescript.svg
paradigmMulti-paradigm: functional, generic, imperative, object-oriented
familyECMAScript
designerMicrosoft,
Anders Hejlsberg,
Luke Hoban
developerMicrosoft
released
latest release version
latest release date
latest preview version
typingDuck, gradual, strong, structural
scopeLexical
licenseApache 2.0
file ext.ts, .tsx, .mts, .cts
website
influenced byC#, F#, Java, JavaScript, ActionScript
influencedAtScript, AssemblyScript, ArkTS

Anders Hejlsberg, Luke Hoban

TypeScript (TS) is a high-level programming language that adds static typing with optional type annotations to JavaScript. It is designed for developing large applications. It transpiles to JavaScript. It is developed by Microsoft as free and open-source software released under an Apache License 2.0.

TypeScript may be used to develop JavaScript applications for both client-side and server-side execution (as with React.js, Node.js, Deno or Bun). Multiple options are available for transpiling. The default TypeScript Compiler can be used, or the Babel compiler can be invoked to convert TypeScript to JavaScript.

TypeScript supports definition files that can contain type information of existing JavaScript libraries, much like C++ header files can describe the structure of existing object files. This enables other programs to use the values defined in the files as if they were statically typed TypeScript entities. There are third-party header files for popular libraries such as jQuery, MongoDB, and D3.js. TypeScript headers for the Node.js library modules are also available, allowing development of Node.js programs within TypeScript.

The TypeScript compiler is written in TypeScript and compiled to JavaScript. It is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. Anders Hejlsberg, lead architect of C# and creator of Delphi and Turbo Pascal, has worked on developing TypeScript.

History

TypeScript was released to the public in October 2012, with version 0.8, after two years of internal development at Microsoft. Soon after the initial public release, Miguel de Icaza praised the language, but criticized the lack of mature integrated development environment (IDE) support apart from Microsoft Visual Studio, which was unavailable then on Linux and macOS. As of April 2021 there is support in other IDEs and text editors, including Emacs, Vim, WebStorm, Atom and Microsoft's own Visual Studio Code. TypeScript 0.9, released in 2013, added support for generics.

TypeScript 1.0 was released at Microsoft's Build developer conference in 2014. Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 provided built-in support for TypeScript. Further improvement were made in July 2014, when the development team announced a new TypeScript compiler, asserted to have a five-fold performance increase. Simultaneously, the source code, which was initially hosted on CodePlex, was moved to GitHub.

On 22 September 2016, TypeScript 2.0 was released, introducing several features, including the ability for programmers to optionally enforce null safety, to mitigate what's sometimes referred to as the billion-dollar mistake.

TypeScript 3.0 was released on 30 July 2018, bringing many language additions like tuples in rest parameters and spread expressions, rest parameters with tuple types, generic rest parameters and so on.

TypeScript 4.0 was released on 20 August 2020. While 4.0 did not introduce any breaking changes, it added language features such as Custom JSX Factories and Variadic Tuple Types.

TypeScript 5.0 was released on 16 March 2023 and included support for decorators.

On March 11, 2025, Anders Hejlsberg announced on the TypeScript blog that the team is working on a Go port of the TypeScript compiler to be released as TypeScript version 7.0 later this year. It is expected to feature a 10x speedup.

Design

TypeScript originated from the shortcomings of JavaScript for developing large-scale applications both at Microsoft and among their external customers. Challenges with dealing with complex JavaScript code led to demand for custom tooling to ease developing of components in the language.

Developers sought a solution that would not break compatibility with the ECMAScript (ES) standard and its ecosystem, so a compiler was developed to transform a superset of JavaScript with type annotations and classes (TypeScript files) back into vanilla ECMAScript 5 code. TypeScript classes were based on the then-proposed ECMAScript 6 class specification to make writing prototypal inheritance less verbose and error-prone, and type annotations enabled IntelliSense and improved tooling.

Features

Main article: JavaScript syntax#TypeScript-specific features

TypeScript adds the following syntax extensions to JavaScript:

  • Type signatures (annotations) and compile-time type checking
  • Type inference
  • Interfaces
  • Enumerated types
  • Generics
  • Namespaces
  • Tuples
  • Explicit resource management Syntactically, TypeScript is very similar to JScript .NET, another Microsoft implementation of the ECMA-262 language standard that added support for static typing and classical object-oriented language features such as classes, inheritance, interfaces, and namespaces. Other inspirations include Java and C#.

Compatibility with JavaScript

As TypeScript is simply a superset of JavaScript, existing JavaScript can be adapted to TypeScript and TypeScript program can seamlessly consume JavaScript. The compiler can target all ECMAScript versions 5 and above, transpiling modern features like classes and arrow functions to their older counterparts.

With TypeScript, it is possible to use existing JavaScript code, incorporate popular JavaScript libraries, and call TypeScript-generated code from other JavaScript. Type declarations for these libraries are usually provided with the source code but can be declared or installed separately if needed.

Development tools

Compiler

The TypeScript compiler, named tsc, is written in TypeScript. As a result, it can be compiled into regular JavaScript and can then be executed in any JavaScript engine (e.g. a browser). The compiler package comes bundled with a script host that can execute the compiler. It is also available as a Node.js package that uses Node.js as a host. The compiler is currently being rewritten in Go for version 7.

The compiler can target a given edition of ECMAScript (such as ECMAScript 5 for legacy browser compatibility), but by default compiles for the latest standards.

IDE and editor support

  • Microsoft provides a plug-in for Visual Studio 2012 and WebMatrix, full integrated support in Visual Studio 2013, Visual Studio 2015, and basic text editor support for Emacs and Vim.
  • Visual Studio Code supports TypeScript in addition to several other languages, and offers features like debugging and intelligent code completion.
  • alm.tools is an open source cloud IDE for TypeScript built using TypeScript, ReactJS and TypeStyle.
  • JetBrains supports TypeScript with code completion, refactoring and debugging in its IDEs built on IntelliJ platform, such as PhpStorm 6, WebStorm 6, and IntelliJ IDEA, as well as their Visual Studio Add-in and extension, ReSharper 8.1.
  • Atom has a TypeScript plugin with support for code completion, navigation, formatting, and fast compilation.
  • The online Cloud9 IDE and Codenvy support TypeScript.
  • A plugin is available for the NetBeans IDE.
  • A plugin is available for the Eclipse IDE (version Kepler)
  • TypEcs is available for the Eclipse IDE.
  • The Cross Platform Cloud IDE Codeanywhere supports TypeScript.
  • Webclipse An Eclipse plugin designed to develop TypeScript and Angular 2.
  • Angular IDE A standalone IDE available via npm to develop TypeScript and Angular 2 applications, with integrated terminal support.
  • Tide TypeScript Interactive Development Environment for Emacs.

Integration with build automation tools

Using plug-ins, TypeScript can be integrated with build automation tools, including Grunt (grunt-ts), Apache Maven (TypeScript Maven Plugin), Gulp (gulp-typescript) and Gradle (TypeScript Gradle Plugin).

Linting tools

TSLint scans TypeScript code for conformance to a set of standards and guidelines. ESLint, a standard JavaScript linter, also provided some support for TypeScript via community plugins. However, ESLint's inability to leverage TypeScript's language services precluded certain forms of semantic linting and program-wide analysis. In early 2019, the TSLint team announced the linter's deprecation in favor of typescript-eslint, a joint effort of the TSLint, ESLint and TypeScript teams to consolidate linting under the ESLint umbrella for improved performance, community unity and developer accessibility.

Release history

Version numberRelease dateSignificant changes
performance improvements
`protected` modifier, tuple types
union types, `let` and `const` declarations, template strings, type guards, type aliases
ES6 modules, `namespace` keyword, `for..of` support, decorators
JSX support, intersection types, local type declarations, abstract classes and methods, user-defined type guard functions
`async` and `await` support,
constraints generics, control flow analysis errors, string literal types, `allowJs`
null- and undefined-aware types, control flow based type analysis, discriminated union types, `never` type, `readonly` keyword, type of `this` for functions
`keyof` and lookup types, mapped types, object spread and rest,
mix-in classes, `object` type,
`async` iteration, generic parameter defaults, strict option
dynamic import expressions, string enums, improved inference for generics, strict contravariance for callback parameters
optional catch clause variables
strict function types
constant-named properties, fixed-length tuples
conditional types, improved `keyof` with intersection types
support for symbols and numeric literals in `keyof` and mapped object types
project references, extracting and spreading parameter lists with tuples
mappable tuple and array types
stricter checking for `bind`, `call`, and `apply`
relaxed rules on methods of union types, incremental builds for composite projects
faster incremental builds, type inference from generic functions, `readonly` modifier for arrays, `const` assertions, type-checking global `this`
faster incremental builds, omit helper type, improved excess property checks in union types, smarter union type checking
Stricter generators, more accurate array spread, better Unicode support for identifiers
Optional chaining, nullish coalescing
Type-only imports and exports, ECMAScript private fields, top-level `await`
Improvements in inference, speed improvements
Variadic tuple types, labeled tuple elements
Template literal types, key remapping in mapped types, recursive conditional types
Smarter type alias preservation, leading/middle rest elements in tuple types, stricter checks for the `in` operator, `abstract` construct signatures
Separate write types on properties, `override` and the `--noImplicitOverride` flag, template string type improvements
Control flow analysis of aliased conditions and discriminants, symbol and template string pattern index signatures
Type and promise improvements, supporting lib from `node_modules`, template string types as discriminants, and `es2022` module
Type inference and checks improvements, support for ES2022 target, better ECMAScript handling
Support for ES modules, instantiation expressions, variance annotations for type parameters, better control-flow checks and type check improvements
Intersection and union types improvements, better type inference
`satisfies` operator, auto-accessors in classes (proposal), improvements in type narrowing and checks
ES decorators (proposal), type inference improvements, `bundler` module resolution mode, speed and size optimizations
Easier implicit returns for `undefined` and unrelated types for getters and setters
`using` declarations and explicit resource management, decorator metadata and named and anonymous tuple elements
Improved type narrowing, correctness checks and performance optimizations
6 March 2024`Object.groupBy` and `Map.groupBy` support
20 June 2024Inferred Type Predicates, Regular Expression Syntax Checking, and Type Imports in JSDoc
9 September 2024Advanced type inference, variadic tuple enhancements, partial module declarations.
22 November 2024
28 February 2025
31 July 2025
Introduce some deprecations and breaking changes to align with the upcoming native codebase.
Rewrite in Go with faster performance.

References

Citations

Sources

References

  1. "TypeScript". [[CodePlex]].
  2. "Type Compatibility".
  3. "The Early History of F#".
  4. (28 April 2020). "How ActionScript foreshadowed TypeScript".
  5. (3 October 2012). "Microsoft TypeScript: the JavaScript we need, or a solution looking for a problem?". [[Condé Nast]].
  6. "TypeScript Programming with Visual Studio Code".
  7. "borisyankov/DefinitelyTyped". [[GitHub]].
  8. (1 October 2012). "Microsoft takes the wraps off TypeScript, a superset of JavaScript". [[CBS Interactive]].
  9. (1 October 2012). "TypeScript: JavaScript Development at Application Scale". Microsoft.
  10. (1 October 2012). "Microsoft TypeScript: Can the father of C# save us from the tyranny of JavaScript?". [[ZDNet]].
  11. (1 October 2012). "Microsoft Augments Javascript for Large-scale Development". [[IDG Enterprise]].
  12. (1 October 2012). "Microsoft augments JavaScript for large-scale development". [[International Data Group.
  13. (2 April 2014). "Announcing TypeScript 1.0". Microsoft.
  14. (1 October 2012). "TypeScript: First Impressions".
  15. (1 October 2012). "Microsoft TypeScript: Can the father of C# save us from the tyranny of JavaScript?". [[ZDNet]].
  16. "TypeStrong: The only TypeScript package you will ever need".
  17. (14 May 2013). "Working with TypeScript in Visual Studio 2012". [[Dr. Dobb's Journal]].
  18. (18 June 2013). "TypeScript 0.9 arrives with new compiler, support for generics". [[The Register]].
  19. (2 April 2014). "TypeScript". Microsoft.
  20. (25 February 2014). "Microsoft TypeScript graduates to Visual Studio". [[International Data Group.
  21. (21 July 2014). "New Compiler and Moving to GitHub". Microsoft.
  22. (22 September 2016). "TypeScript, Microsoft's JavaScript for big applications, reaches version 2.0". [[Condé Nast]].
  23. (30 July 2018). "Announcing TypeScript 3.0".
  24. (30 July 2018). "TypeScript 3.0".
  25. (20 August 2020). "Announcing TypeScript 4.0".
  26. "Documentation – TypeScript 5.0".
  27. (2025-03-11). "A 10x Faster TypeScript".
  28. (5 October 2012). "What is TypeScript and why with Anders Hejlsberg". www.hanselminutes.com.
  29. (1 October 2012). "TypeScript: JavaScript Development at Application Scale". msdn.com.
  30. "Documentation – TypeScript 5.2".
  31. "Welcome to TypeScript". [[Microsoft]].
  32. Lawson, Darryl K. Taft, Loraine. (2025-03-12). "Go Power: Microsoft's Bold Bet on Faster TypeScript Tools".
  33. (1 October 2012). "Sublime Text, Vi, Emacs: TypeScript enabled!". [[Microsoft]].
  34. (27 February 2013). "TypeScript support in WebStorm 6". JetBrains.
  35. (28 October 2013). "TypeScript support in ReSharper 8.1". JetBrains.
  36. "ReSharper: The Visual Studio Extension for .NET Developers by JetBrains".
  37. "atom-typescript".
  38. "TypeStrong/grunt-ts". GitHub.
  39. "ppedregal/typescript-maven-plugin". GitHub.
  40. "ivogabe/gulp-typescript". GitHub.
  41. "sothmann/typescript-gradle-plugin". GitHub.
  42. "TSLint".
  43. (19 February 2019). "TSLint in 2019".
  44. "TSLint Deprecated to Focus Support on typescript-eslint".
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