TypeScript - Systems Talk by Steve Lucco (Microsoft)

Guest Speaker:  Steve Lucco, Microsoft Research

Title:  TypeScript

Abstract:

TypeScript is a programming language whose goal is to support development of large JavaScript programs.  TypeScript is a superset of the current JavaScript standard (ECMAScript 5) that adds an optional static type system to JavaScript.  TypeScript exists only to support high-level thinking about JavaScript programs; it has no impact on runtime behavior.  Because of this, TypeScript is an example of "types for tooling" vs. the more traditional idea of "types for runtime safety."  TypeScript has a novel design for type inference; the goal of the design is to provide maximum convenience (few annotations required) and transparency (chains of inference are clear and local). The TypeScript compiler, incremental static analysis tools, and specification are open source (see http://www.typescriptlang.org/). Several million lines of TypeScript are part of shipping Microsoft products.  Since the community preview release in October, 2012, several 100K+ line TypeScript projects have grown up outside of Microsoft and the TypeScript community has created a site, https://github.com/DefinitelyTyped/DefinitelyTyped, that holds over 100 community-maintained TypeScript descriptions of popular JavaScript frameworks such as jQuery.

Bio:

Steve Lucco is a Technical Fellow at Microsoft, where he is responsible for Microsoft's web development tools and runtimes.  He led the development of Microsoft's Chakra JavaScript engine, which powers Internet Explorer.  Currently, Chakra is 30% faster than Chrome V8 on SunSpider, the most widely cited JavaScript benchmark.  He started the TypeScript team and contributes to the design and implementation of TypeScript.

Host:  Will Evans

Contact:  Holly Kwan (Tel: 604.822.3060)