[robpalmer]

I can empathize with this view.

JavaScript is bound by backwards compatibility. It is expressed by the soundbite "don't break the web". I would love for typeof null to not be "object", and it seems appealing to say "well if JS won't fix it, maybe TS should."

The problem is that this outcome has many negative effects including loss of trust. Orta (a member of the TypeScript team) describes this exact scenario in his video "How Does the TypeScript Team Try to Avoid Negative Effects on the JS Ecosystem" in which he talks about TypeScript "Embracing and Extending" JavaScript: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr0TnQ2mHwY

The TS team seem to be firmly going in the direction of ECMAScript alignment and the JS + Types model, which is something the article advocates for too. Overall this increases my trust in the technology.

On a related topic Bjarne Stroustrup once said "There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses."

[jariel]

Yes, the market dictated that move, a non-TS JS may have fallen flat.

That said, it's MS, not some side project. They could feasibly take the road to 'pure TS' especially now that they have the core following and MS has some brand trust.

There's probably a huge following of folks that would jump on a Pure TS train as long as it wasn't cloistered by all the .Net legacy.

Like PureTS on Mono VM type thing.