Microsoft has laid out its roadmap for TypeScript, charting the course of the programming language from versions 1.3 to 2.0.
Since the 1.0 release of TypeScript—Microsoft’s superset JavaScript programming language—back in February, Microsoft has focused on performance improvements and growing the language’s open-source community. After an incremental release including a new, faster compiler, the TypeScript team has its eye on the future with the ultimate goal of bringing good tooling to JavaScript development.
TypeScript program manager Jonathan Turner announced the roadmap in a blog post. According to Turner, TypeScript’s next release, 1.3, will roll out two new features: protected types to enable more object-oriented patterns with a protected access modifier, and tuple types, to allow type-safe usage of destructuring arrays to align TypeScript practices with the upcoming release of ECMAScript 6.
What’s new in TypeScript 1.3 and 1.4
TypeScript 1.3 will also include a newly rewritten language service for a smoother development experience in text editors and a preview of new Visual Studio features, and will a mark the beginning of TypeScript compiler API standardization.
“You might ask, ‘where is TypeScript 1.2?’ We had intended to use that release as a stabilization release, but 1.1 has proven stable enough that teams are moving to it,” Turner wrote. “This lets us jump to finishing the language service work and getting new features out sooner than we had originally planned.”
Turner then turned the roadmap to TypeScript 1.4, which will include further language enhancements such as union types for a more precise type with multiple options in heterogeneous arrays, and type refinements using “typeof” in “if-blocks.” The features, Turner wrote, “work together to allow more natural patterns when working with JavaScript code.”
The road to 2.0
Turner’s roadmap for TypeScript’s five subsequent incremental releases leading to TypeScript 2.0 is more vague, but the overarching goals are clear: ECMAScript 6 compatibility and tooling support.
According to Turner, TypeScript 2.0 is envisioned as “the superset of the next JavaScript.” Aligning the language with ECMAScript 6, the next standardized version of JavaScript, will foster opportunities for developers to work with new code patterns such as destructuring, string templates, promises and iterators, Turner wrote.
In terms of tooling, the TypeScript team is working with the teams at Flow—the popular project management middleware—and Google’s AngularJS open-source JavaScript framework to expand TypeScript’s support of various JavaScript libraries and upcoming framework releases such as AngularJS 2.0.
There are no set release dates as of yet for any future version of TypeScript, but several TypeScript 1.3 and 1.4 features are already available on the TypeScript GitHub repository.
