[marshray]

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.

[pjmlp]

> 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.

[marshray]

You can use Visual Studio Express 2012 for Web, which is no cost. Older VS's you can of course launch the command line compiler. The generated Javascipt is not mangled and is quite debuggable.

I've been using Vim and the browsers' F12.

[pjmlp]

That might work in a startup, not in an enterprise environment where your computer image is controlled regularly by IT and all software requires approval before use.

[marshray]

It is itself a Javascript program. You can use Typescript in a browser. I once had it working on Windows RT via cscript.exe.

[pjmlp]

The whole issue was about the development environment experience, not how to execute it.