TS is just fancy JS. If it didn't exist, Flow, Haxe or Dart would just be in the same place (static types languages with JS-ish syntax that compile to JS).

> TS is just fancy JS. If it didn't exist, Flow, Haxe or Dart would just be in the same place

"TS is just fancy JS" is like saying "Java is just fancy machine code" or something like that. It's a major software project with a much larger scope than simply slapping a few types on top of common JS constructs. More importantly, it's been an innovating force at the language and editor tooling levels for web developers worldwide. I think it's likely to be the most successful language that Microsoft has ever produced in the long run.

> "TS is just fancy JS" is like saying "Java is just fancy machine code"

Terrible analogy. TS doesn't compile to WASM or anything, it compiles to human-readable JS. Java doesn't compile to C++ or C. The JVM is an entire platform.

> More importantly, it's been an innovating force at the language and editor tooling levels for web developers worldwide.

MS has always been decent when it comes to tooling but there's nothing particularly innovative about TS.

We'll agree to disagree on everything you've said then :)

And if Java didn't exist we would have other tools as well. And yet Microsoft has by far the largest share of language adoption on the web, which likely applies to the tooling too.

By far? You really think the majority of websites are using TS-generated JS? The majority of the web is Wordpress and PHP frameworks. TS has only become 'popular' rather recently, and there's still a TON of websites that are full-stack SSR with only modest amounts of JS.

As for tooling, maybe. VS has always had a decent amount of mind-share. Even then though, I can see Jetbrains + Eclipse + Sublime + Emacs + Vim + others capturing at least 50% combined...

Which languages and tooling are you talking about?