Monday, December 3, 2012

TouchDevelop: A touch-first IDE for the Web created with TypeScript

The TouchDevelop is a novel, touch-first IDE originally written as a Windows Phone 7 app using C# and XAML. The TouchDevelop lets you create WP7, Win8 and Web-apps directly on your phone, tablet, or desktop.

The TouchDevelop team was frustrated by the lack of compile-time checking trying to build the JavaScript version, both for Win8 and the Web. They were very excited to be one of the early adopters of TypeScript, a typed superset of JavaScript that compiles to idiomatic JavaScript.

Watch this video where one of the creators of Nemerle language M. Moskal explains the using of the TypeScript during the development of the TouchDevelop project.

M. Moskal also told that TypeScript team is very busy creating generics. The TouchDevelop is probably the first large-scale Web app written in TypeScript language. You can download the TouchDevelop here.