[jamwise]

I've experienced this, but it's mostly because languages like Python and TypeScript give you way too many escape hatches. I get the intent: allow devs to convert their code base slowly. But in practice it just lets developers opt out of the benefits of typing to "save time" in the short run.

[rezonant]

Once you are squarely in a Typescript program and not a "Javascript program gradually adopting Typescript", it would be a good idea to enable Strict mode which forbids implicit-any, effectively meaning the only places you can omit type declarations is where the language will infer the type. Typescript for instance does not infer types of function arguments via their usages (like Flow does), which means in strict mode you must explicitly provide a type for all arguments within a function declaration.

I used to be a bit of a pragmatist when it comes to strict mode, but over the years that has subsided, nowadays I think it is plainly obvious that all Typescript programs should use strict mode unless there's a damn good reason. And I'm not sure there are any legitimate damn good reasons.

True there is no ability to forbid an explicit-any type declaration, though.

[LudwigNagasena]

There is @typescript-eslint/no-explicit-any.

[dns_snek]

More generally you can use "no-restricted-syntax" rule to forbid almost any type of syntax by matching AST against CSS-like selectors.

https://eslint.org/docs/latest/rules/no-restricted-syntax

https://typescript-eslint.io/play/

[LudwigNagasena]

I’ve never had a real problem with developers opting out. It’s not that hard to enforce coding standards.

The real problem with Python is the inexpressiveness of its type system and the mess of typed dicts, dataclasses and pydantic classes.

TypeScript may fail narrowing here and there or require a superfluous assert, but usually writing properly typed code, especially with zod, is the path of least resistance.

[frollogaston]

Well now Claude will add the types for me, so I don't need to use escape hatches

[dns_snek]

As long as you're fine with the types being semantic gibberish because all agents I've used take the lowest effort approach to make the error go away.

You probably have the same logical type duplicated in 3+ different places (at least partially), including inline casts using type literals like "maybeCat as { meow(): void }"

[frollogaston]

So far I've seen it actually do the types well when I tell it to add types. But even if it didn't, I wouldn't care, it's just to check a box.

[galaxyLogic]

I haven't tried that but so are you saying I could basically code in JavaScript and then ask Claude to turn it into TypeScript?

[frollogaston]

Yeah, I've done it with JS, but more often with Python.