Microsoft puts its spin on JavaScript with TypeScript
techrepublic.com
techrepublic.com
The only thing I would complain about is some of the tooling is still a bit unstable, which is understandable. I'm using Visual Studio 2012.
I've been looking forward to 0.9 for some time now, as the generic support allows me to fully express all of the types in my system.
To me the most beautiful thing about TypeScript is it's compatibility with JavaScript and how definition files work. Definition files essentially allow you to write code contracts against existing pieces of JavaScript code that may or may not be outside of your control.
https://github.com/borisyankov/DefinitelyTyped is a good resource for definition files.
However, I easily trade the unstableness of intellisense for the type-safety of TypeScript.
Have tough time getting used to definition files at the moment. Microsoft only offers a v0.8.8 file of Node.js. Loads floating on GitHub that contain errors. Not good. I suspect it is one of those thing where until a lot of people use TypeScript and there are defs for different versions of libraries (by authors), it will be a bit of a wild west.
Fly at it, I say.
I use WebStorm to give me autocomplete for the version of Node I am running. The defs are there just to make the compiler shut up.