Elixir checks pretty much every box I'd want in a language, but after dealing with nil in Ruby for years and having fun with TypeScript... I'm feeling more drawn to working with type systems.
The one thing I wish is that people stopped writing boolean functions with is_ in front (that is supposed to be only for guards, but not everyone follows that convention).
But, this might just be my wishful thinking.
I think that what you're looking for is already possible today, and that things only get easier over time.
I suppose you could write Elixir in a style that was more type safe by writing in a less polymorphic or recursive style, but the language does not lend itself well to it. Structs and maps are mostly fine, discriminated unions less so.
Depending on what itches your types scratch for you it might be enough, might not. I've never wanted more type system in my Elixir personally.
Either you have a strict type system that does not have an "any" type (yes, I'm looking at you Typescript), or you have a flexible type system like Python/Erlang/Elixir and you do runtime type checking whenever it's needed.
I'm writing more Typescript code than I would in Javascript for almost no type safety benefits (but for documentation, it's awesome).
As another poster said, it can catch the very occasional potential bug but to me at least it's rarely worth the hassle.
I miss static typing after I got back to Elixir from Rust but the BEAM will likely never be statically typed.
To that end, I found utilizing metaprogramming to generate normal and property tests to be much more productive use of my time, with a measurable impact to boot.
I'd love to see experiments to replace typespecs with a more ergonomic type system.
