[kjaer]

> Show me a Typescript codebase not using the type 'any'! In a decent system language you can't get away with that, it's just a fake sense of security.

I don't know the comparison to system languages is fair though, because the use-case for JS is quite different from system languages.

Javascript (and by extension, Typescript) is commonly used to interface between the user and the network, both of which often are outside the bounds of the type system. Add to that any code that interfaces with plain JS, such as external libraries or legacy code. When dealing with those, it's natural to use statically untyped values and type ascriptions based on reasonable assumptions.

Taking that into account, I actually think Typescript's type system is fairly well-designed for the use-case. The problem isn't really with Typescript, it's just intrinsic to the use-case of JS.

[s_tec]

Exactly. Even strongly-typed languages have this problem. In C, it looks like `void *`, while in Java, it's `Object`. The `any` keyword is just the latest in a long line of escape hatches. Pretty much every language has one.

[dragonwriter]

> Even strongly-typed languages have this problem. In C

C is clearly statically typed, but among statically typed language it is quite weakly typed.