I was an expert on JS way before TypeScript. I was kind of slow to adopt it because "the type hints are optimized away and can't even be used to boost runtime performance", but when I did start using it, I loved it and wish I had earlier.

The linked article says the vast majority love TypeScript, too.

I think the real dividing line is probably that people who haven't had to maintain a large project hate TypeScript.

(Which is still weird to me, because you can just turn off `no-implicit-any` and get all the benefits without drawbacks.)

For developers coming from other languages, typescript and the tool support in VS Code is what makes frontend engineering tolerable these days. A big difference with just a few years ago. I insist on it in most projects I'm responsible for. I see no good technical reasons not to use it at this point.

I understand “limiting options and workflow” as “limiting the stupid amounts of yolo that JS allows”.

TS shows you just how bad JS can be without very, very diligent processes to keep it in check.