Ask HN: Why is it so bad to use any in TypeScript?

Because it’s the main benefit of using typescript.

For a playground can be excessive, but for production is a nightmare.

Otherwise, you can use only JS with JSDoc and enable the @ts-check.

Ideally you should use types, but if you have to use any because of some complicated situation where the compiler’s bitching, it’s no big deal. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a shamey OCD a-hole.

at my work place we've switched to plain JS with jsdoc comments and a couple d.ts files for reused types so far it seems easier to move faster

typescript is still added to the projects but only for type checking with "allowJs" and "checkJs" configured to true

you're basically giving away the biggest benefit you get - typing

I'm not saying doing it all the time, at least not for public interfaces of a library