Even before TypeScript came into existence, JavaScript had already been, for a very long time, the only language natively supported by one of the most important interactive content delivery channels — the Web.
JavaScript implements a specification that defines a language called ECMAScript. The ECMAScript standard, first published in 1997, reached its 5th edition in 2009. The development of this edition took a long time and involved disputes between the two major contributors — Netscape (Mozilla)and Microsoft.
Throughout the process, features like classes, modules and even static typing were already discussed, however, none of them actually made it into ES5.
The next major update (6th edition) came in 2015, finally introducing classes, arrow functions, modules and some other things. It took web browsers considerable time to catch up with the specification, and so JavaScript transpilers entered the scene.
One could write modern JavaScript and have it transformed into ES5 as part of the build process. However, people wanted to use the new language constructs even before ES2015 was published. This lead to the creation of multiple alternative languages that could be compiled to ES5. Among them were for example CoffeeScript (released in 2010) and TypeScript (released in 2012).
Since 2015, the ECMAScript standard has continuously evolved, releasing a new edition every year. Similarly, other web-related technologies and standards were also evolving rapidly. Various APIs were being added that gave web pages more and more power (e.g. canvas>, video>, History, Storage, File and Blob, Crypto, WebRTC).
There were also significant improvements in JavaScript engines. In 2008 three major JavaScript runtimes started compiling JavaScript to native code. V8 (Chrome) came out that year with Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation support from the get-go. SpiderMonkey (Firefox) gained JIT compilation support through a new engine called TraceMonkey. And WebKit (Safari) started generating native code in its next generation engine called SquirrelFish Extreme. Opera and Internet Explorer followed suit in 2009. These improvements constituted a landmark advancement in the history of JavaScript engine performance.
Lastly, Node.js was released in 2009, eventually becoming a popular server-side stack choice.
src - https://sixfold.medium.com/why-we-chose-and-why-we-dont-switch-away-from-typescript-55bbada36ad8
ref - https://wesbos.com/javascript
JavaScript implements a specification that defines a language called ECMAScript. The ECMAScript standard, first published in 1997, reached its 5th edition in 2009. The development of this edition took a long time and involved disputes between the two major contributors — Netscape (Mozilla)and Microsoft.
Throughout the process, features like classes, modules and even static typing were already discussed, however, none of them actually made it into ES5.
The next major update (6th edition) came in 2015, finally introducing classes, arrow functions, modules and some other things. It took web browsers considerable time to catch up with the specification, and so JavaScript transpilers entered the scene.
One could write modern JavaScript and have it transformed into ES5 as part of the build process. However, people wanted to use the new language constructs even before ES2015 was published. This lead to the creation of multiple alternative languages that could be compiled to ES5. Among them were for example CoffeeScript (released in 2010) and TypeScript (released in 2012).
Since 2015, the ECMAScript standard has continuously evolved, releasing a new edition every year. Similarly, other web-related technologies and standards were also evolving rapidly. Various APIs were being added that gave web pages more and more power (e.g. canvas>, video>, History, Storage, File and Blob, Crypto, WebRTC).
There were also significant improvements in JavaScript engines. In 2008 three major JavaScript runtimes started compiling JavaScript to native code. V8 (Chrome) came out that year with Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation support from the get-go. SpiderMonkey (Firefox) gained JIT compilation support through a new engine called TraceMonkey. And WebKit (Safari) started generating native code in its next generation engine called SquirrelFish Extreme. Opera and Internet Explorer followed suit in 2009. These improvements constituted a landmark advancement in the history of JavaScript engine performance.
Lastly, Node.js was released in 2009, eventually becoming a popular server-side stack choice.
src - https://sixfold.medium.com/why-we-chose-and-why-we-dont-switch-away-from-typescript-55bbada36ad8
ref - https://wesbos.com/javascript