I recently decided to try out a new seed project for Angular using TypeScript. Following the guidance from this blog post on Visual Studio Code documentation (check out the second headline), I learned that I can remove /// references at the top of my .ts files and still receive proper intellisense support in Visual Studio Code as long as my tsconfig.json file is set up correctly. However, despite having the correct setup, my angular variable isn't being recognized unless I include the reference directive.
If you're curious, here's the link to the project I'm experimenting with. Take a look at the src/client/home/home.ts file for more details.
Just a heads up, running gulp may not be successful right now since this project is still a work in progress.