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Comment by throw_m239339 | Hacker News Reader

> Without Angular, we may very well not have TypeScript today.

Typescript was started at Microsoft by the guy who designed Turbo Pascal and C#, so completely independently from Google's Angular team. Angular had its own "AtScript" and eventually ditched that. Typescript had experimental decorator support well before Angular Team moved from AtScript, because it was a ECMAScript proposal.

Angular had zero influence in the design or success of Typescript. Typescript however does support JSX optionally so one can claim that React DID influence Typescript's design decisions.

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(I have worked on the TypeScript team since before its initial release)

While it's true that TS would have been started with or without Angular, I think OP is largely correct in the influence that Angular's embrace of TS had in TS's long-term success.

It's difficult to see these days, but if you were watching TypeScript's adoption numbers back when Angular made its TypeScript announcement, there is a marked inflection point when that happened. I was running lots of charts and graphs at the time tracking all kinds of data, and in every graph, you could see the Angular announcement in the chart; it's where the line went from kinda slow and linear to kinda fast and exponential. It was a true discontinuity in the second derivative.

We can't run history twice and see what would have happened without Angular, but I think the quantitative impact in this timeline is undeniable.

I chose TypeScript for a large project for the first time in early ~2018 and had no idea how much history I had missed. I presumed that the adoption was the other way around and that TypeScript was chosen because it fit the project's needs, but just as grandparent and parent suggest, AtScript was very much a thing.

Talk excerpt talking about Angular directives ~8 years ago! https://youtu.be/lGdnh8QSPPk?t=275

Even if that's true (it's definitely not how it was depicted at the time at conferences and from people on the Google side).. the point stands Angular was absolutely huge for it's day and they pushed TypeScript really really hard. It was a truce between two huge companies and it made waves in terms of people trusting Microsoft.

I have personally never been one of those mega Microsoft haters but I witnessed shouting matches in the office from people that we're hotly opposed to TypeScript being added to the codebase against others using Angular as a core motivation in many of their counter-arguments.

I'm super glad we have TypeScript one way or the other because the team is so dedicated to OSS.

> Even if that's true (it's definitely not how it was depicted at the time at conferences and from people on the Google side).. the point stands Angular was absolutely huge for it's day and they pushed TypeScript really really hard. It was a truce between two huge companies and it made waves in terms of people trusting Microsoft.

Angular.js was huge, by the time Angular version whatever because it was always changing, figured out what it wanted to be, most front-end developers already moved to React.

What Microsoft product uses Angular? Doesn't Teams uses Angular.js but not Angular? and what does a Google conference has to do with Microsoft? Nothing.

> Typescript had experimental decorator support well before Angular Team moved from AtScript

Do you have a source for this. My memory isn't so good but I seem to remember that the Angular team pushed to get this Stage 0 proposal implemented even though the TypeScript team usually waits until Stage 2 or 3 to implement.

Typescript was born of JScript. Check the history and the docs.

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