On July 8, 2026, TypeScript 7 shipped : the same compiler, ported to a new language, and about ten times faster. On the VS Code codebase, a full build went from 125.7 seconds to 10.6 seconds.

The port had been announced in March 2025 by Anders Hejlsberg , the man who designed C#. And the new language wasn't C#. It was Go.

To see why that makes sense, it helps to go back 43 years. Across four languages, one idea keeps coming back: the time between typing your code and seeing what it does.

A compiler from Denmark

In the early 1980s, Hejlsberg wrote a Pascal compiler for small personal computers in Denmark. It was sold as Compass Pascal, and later as Poly Pascal. A young California company, Borland, licensed it, and Hejlsberg stayed in Denmark: according to Dr. Dobb's , Borland sent him 9600-baud modems so he could send each new build to California.

Turbo Pascal, 1983

On November 20, 1983, it shipped as Turbo Pascal . The numbers, again from Dr.…