Every good programming language resembles one another. Every bad one is bad in its own way. One of JavaScript's most cited flaws is dynamic typing. But is it really a flaw?
Every language has its flaws
PHP isn't multithreaded. Python is slow. Go had no generics until March 2022. Ruby doesn't scale. These are trade-offs, not failures — deliberate decisions that shaped what each language is good at.
JavaScript was designed to be flexible. No types, no compilation step, runs everywhere. That flexibility is why it conquered the web. TypeScript's premise is that this flexibility is a problem worth solving.
But is it?
What it actually costs
Adding TypeScript to a project isn't free:
- A build step that didn't exist before
tsconfig.jsonconfiguration overhead- Type errors that compile away but runtime errors that don't
- Every third-party package needs
@types/*or ships broken definitions - Onboarding developers who spend more time fighting the type system than shipping features
TypeScript gives you compile-time safety. It gives you nothing at runtime.
The ecosystem caught up
The strongest argument for TypeScript was always: "how else do you know the shape of your data?" The answer, in 2026, is: you probably already do.
- Prisma and Mongoose define your data schema. The shape of your data is already declared — TypeScript is a redundant layer on top.
- GraphQL is contract-first by design. Your API types are generated, not hand-written.
- Zod and Valibot give you runtime validation — the thing TypeScript actually can't do.
The tooling moved. The justification didn't.
Choose your complexity
There are cases where TypeScript earns its place — large teams, public libraries, codebases that outlive the people who built them. The type system becomes documentation, and documentation has value.
But a CRUD app backed by Prisma? A GraphQL API with generated types? A solo project or a small team that moves fast? The complexity budget is better spent elsewhere.
Every language has its flaws. One of the issues with JavaScript is that many people are trying to fix the wrong thing.