I haven't had trouble with maintenance or avoiding bugs with NodeJS. I don't see justification for putting in 30-40% more time and effort for the same result.

To me it seems like an intentional complication of something which can otherwise be simple. Which is unfortunately somewhat common in this industry of software engineering.

It seems there might even be an interest for engineers to keep things complicated-- to gatekeep the industry, to make themselves seem more skilled/necessary so as to keep a job for longer.

(more time in a project => more money by the hour. More LoC looks like more work was done... even if the same can be accomplished with 60-70% of the code (i.e. without the type system)).