Imagine having to deal with a complex JSON object and still having TypeScript typecheck in place. The complex objects cause us to use
any
in the code in order to navigate around the Typecheck of TypeScript.
Sometimes, we may also have to turn off the linter rules in order to make this work.
If you're hitting an external API (without using someting like tRPC) your best bet is to do schema validation at runtime. You can always just assert that the values coming back match a structure you define as an interface, but if the endpoints change, you might not realize until your app starts breaking.
The tool I've seen to do this is zod. It's TS first approach lets you define a schema, and validate your data against it, and the data it returns will either throw an error if the structure is wrong, or return the data already statically typed.
No assuming the data is structured how you expect it, instead checking the structure and applying an interface all in one go!
I don't type all of my code (as in not in every project I work on), but when I have the opportunity to use TS it definitely helps me to catch errors earlier. So yeah, I'd say it does help to increase quality, especially when you work in a team, TS helps to keep consistency on the codebase. Also refactoring: so much easier with TS!
Disclaimer: I still sometimes swear at TS because I'm still learning it :) Just this week I invented at least 5 new swearwords in at least 2 languages I speak ;)
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