[tommyd]

  So it just leaves you in this limbo zone where you don't get to use the features of the native language that make up for it being so crappy, nor do you ever get to use the features of the transpiled language that promises to keep your code easy to modify over time. So that's what I mean about "worst of both worlds".

I have to disagree with you on this - as you mentioned, you can always use the "any" type - you lose type safety but can then do more or less anything "type unsafe" you could do in JS... so to my mind it's almost more like the best of both worlds, you get strong typing wherever practical but you also have an escape hatch for times when it's too hard/impossible to type something.