If you were building JavaScript apps in the 2000s, you were probably having a bad time. Users were demanding more interactive experiences on the web. Developers were building large, complex web apps. And JavaScript, the language of the web, began to creak under the strain.

Back then, the experience of writing JavaScript was not particularly fun. Editor features that are now commonplace, like autocomplete and error highlighting, often weren't available. As applications grew more and more complex, working with JavaScript became a nightmare.

This came to a head at Microsoft, where our story starts.

## The Birth of TypeScript

Around 2010, Microsoft noticed something strange. Some of their teams were using a community project called Script# (ScriptSharp) to build JavaScript apps. The Script# library allowed for developers to write code in C#, which would then be transformed into JavaScript.

There are a lot of benefits of writing code in a strongly-typed language like C#. When you make silly errors like misspelling a variable name, you'll get a warning right away instead of finding out when the build doesn't work. More importantly, refactoring code in a strongly-typed language is much simpler. If you needed to change how a function was called, this could be done in a few clicks instead of a few hours. By comparison, writing in JavaScript felt like carving your code in stone tablets. Once written, it was hard to change.

Microsoft tasked Anders Heilsberg, the creator of C#, with investigating Script#. He was surprised to find that people were so annoyed with JavaScript that they were willing to code in a completely different language to avoid it. However, he found the combination of C# and the Script# library bizarre. Wouldn't it make more sense to create a new language that was closer to JavaScript, but enable developers to use all the IDE features that JS was missing?

And so, TypeScript was born.

In the decade or so since its introduction, TypeScript has become a staple of modern development. It's been adopted by huge companies like Google, Netflix, and Airbnb. Teams that use TypeScript ship better software, at greater speed– and are happier as a result.

Learning TypeScript _totally_ changed my career. I hope it will do the same for you.
