[forrest2]

If you have tight interfaces that fully encapsulate the use of any, you're fine. If you want to return `any` or pass it around outside of an insulated zone, you're gonna have a bad time.

`any` is a contagious/viral construct where anything it touches could become `any`. And then you spiral out of control and the whole codebase gets nothing from typescript but gets all the operational overhead.

If your browser doesn't support text fragments, can cmd/ctrl+f for "contagious" and/or "gradual" https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/typescript-in-5......

Final note is that you likely shouldn't blindly cast unknown to stuff that you hope it is but instead use type guards to find out what the type is.

Zod is really good at making this ergonomic for most use cases. More niche types using nonprimitives or uncopyable attributes require hand rolled type guards :/

Type guards also update the type of your unknown var after it passes through them if you gate scopes with them if(isX(y)) {...}

Additional guards will merge attributes onto the type