For example, an SQL query builder library may internally do unchecked assertions about the type of the result row that a query transformation would produce (e.g. group_by), however assuming that part is correct, all application code using the query builder's group_by method would benefit from the correct row types being produced by `group_by` which can then be matched against the rest of the application code.
But I think it's more nuanced. Depends of what you mean by type correct. Even in Haskell you can override the compiler and say "trust me on this".
TypeScript could restrict this to be through an operation that creates a new array (e.g.: via .slice()), however that would impose a performance deficit versus vanilla JavaScript. It's not acceptable to the TypeScript project to impose a cost on what would, in JS, just be array assignment or argument passing.
It would be a neat idea to allow a "strictCovariance" mode to allow covariance only with readonly arrays - I think that might solve the issue? i.e.: I can cast "Cat[]" to a "readonly Animal[]", but not to a mutable "Animal[]".
