Anders Hejlsberg, the creator of Turbo Pascal, Delphi, C#, and TypeScript, discusses his 40-year career in language design, revealing how the Sun-Microsoft lawsuit over Java indirectly led to C# and .NET, and how open-sourcing TypeScript was a crucial internal battle at Microsoft. He emphasizes that language design is a long-term, 10-year cycle, and that the true product is the complete edit-compile-run-debug experience, not just the compiler itself.
Summarized by Podsumo
C# was born partly because Sun's lawsuit against Microsoft over Java forced Microsoft to create its own platform-independent language and runtime (.NET), combining the power of C++ with the ease of Visual Basic.
TypeScript's open-sourcing was a transformative internal fight at Microsoft; the project only gained traction after moving to GitHub in 2014, shifting from open-source to open development.
Hejlsberg explains that modern compilers, especially for TypeScript, must function as highly interactive services, performing lazy and deferred analysis to return results within 200ms for a responsive IDE experience.
He shares that even a language as influential as C# started with a tiny team of 6-7 people meeting three times a week, where ideas were rigorously challenged and only those surviving criticism were implemented.
Hejlsberg predicts AI will shift developers' craft from writing code to reviewing and architecting it, emphasizing that AI-generated code still requires human responsibility and understanding.
"[On C#'s creation] 'It was not a great strategy to place your development platform bet on technology that's licensed from a competitor.' — Anders Hejlsberg"
"[On language design longevity] 'It takes 10 years to get to... Version 1 is great, but it has all sorts of issues... it's not until version 3 that it really starts to be great.' — Anders Hejlsberg"
"[On the product being more than the compiler] 'The product is the whole edit compile run debug cycle.' — Anders Hejlsberg"