TypeScript usage growing by leaps and bounds — report

2021 State of JS survey of JavaScript developers also finds significant growth in the use of WebAssembly and Progressive Web Apps.

Usage of TypeScript, Microsoft’s strongly typed language based on JavaScript, has soared compared to six years ago, according to the “2021 State of JS” survey released February 15.

Asked about their use of “JavaScript flavors,” 69% of survey respondents now use TypeScript, compared to just 21% six years ago. JavaScript flavors were defined as languages that compile to JavaScript. Other JavaScript flavors trailed TypeScript by a large margin; the next was Elm at 2.4%, followed by Flow at 1.7% and CoffeeScript at 1.5%.

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TypeScript was released as open source in 2012. The current version is TypeScript 4.5.5, with TypeScript 4.6 now in a release candidate phase. The survey was conducted from January 13 to February 2022 and gathered 16,085 responses, to gather data on trends in web development to help developers make technological choices.

Among other findings the 2021 State of JS report:

• JavaScript was described as being in a tremendously better state today than in 2016.
• WebAssembly, a binary format intended to improve web application performance, has been used by 15.6% of respondents, compared to 10.5% last year and 7.2% in 2019.
• Progressive Web Apps, which are web apps that use service workers and other capabilities in an effort to offer an experience on par with native apps, were used by 62.2% of respondents, an increase from 55.9% last year and 48.3% the year before.
• Node.js was the most commonly used JavaScript runtime at 71.5%.
• Python was tops among other languages used by participants at 24.8%. It was followed by PHP at 19% and Java at 18.1%.
• The number of respondents who thought JavaScript was moving too fast was at 38%, down from 59% six years ago.
• React and Vue have been the dominant JavaScript frameworks for six years running.