New TypeScript Devs Discovering the 'any' Type
Description
This image uses the popular 'Is this a pigeon?' meme format, taken from a scene in the anime series 'The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird'. It features the main character, an android, looking at a butterfly with a curious and naive expression. In this meme, the character is labeled 'NEW TS DEVS'. The yellow butterfly is labeled with the TypeScript keyword 'any'. The caption at the bottom of the image reads, 'IS THIS TYPESCRIPT?'. The meme humorously criticizes a common pitfall for developers new to TypeScript: overusing the 'any' type. The 'any' type is a powerful escape hatch that opts out of type-checking, effectively reverting a variable back to plain, dynamically-typed JavaScript. For experienced developers, this meme is a relatable jab at how newcomers often use 'any' as a crutch, thereby defeating the entire purpose of adopting TypeScript, which is to enforce type safety and improve code quality
Comments
21Comment deleted
Using `any` in TypeScript is the grown-up developer equivalent of hiding your vegetables under the mashed potatoes. It feels like you're getting away with something, but you're only cheating your future self
Annotating every variable with `any` and bragging about your TypeScript migration is the same energy as shipping Kubernetes YAML that just runs the monolith container
After 15 years of fighting production fires, I've seen this exact scenario play out: junior dev discovers TypeScript, sprinkles 'any' everywhere like syntactic sugar, then proudly announces they've 'migrated to TypeScript' - meanwhile the codebase has all the type safety of a JavaScript file with extra steps and a false sense of security
Ah yes, the 'any' type - TypeScript's official 'I give up' button. It's the equivalent of migrating from JavaScript to TypeScript by adding '.ts' to your filenames and calling it a day. Senior engineers know that liberal use of 'any' is just JavaScript with extra steps and a false sense of type safety. The real TypeScript journey begins when you realize 'any' is not a feature, it's a code smell - a temporary crutch that should trigger the same alarm bells as seeing 'TODO: fix this later' in production code from 2019
"any" is TypeScript’s panic button - press it enough and you’re just paying a compile-time tax for runtime bugs
In every JS→TS migration, “strict: true” survives until the first SLA breach - then comes noImplicitAny=false and a 2k‑line PR titled “unblock build.”
'any' in TypeScript: the escape hatch that turns type safety into a polite suggestion
yes Comment deleted
I was assigned to react +ts project and I hate it. I used to work with vue + js Maybe I should study more to understand what's the point. Comment deleted
the point is when you get error on compile time instead of messages from users about not working production Comment deleted
I know it's cool and it's a step forward in dev, I just can't feel it yet. Comment deleted
unknown > any change my mind Comment deleted
yes and no Comment deleted
I liked TS more when it was free from Node.js ecosystem Comment deleted
maybe ts turned into node module because it is more comfortable to install it Comment deleted
Back in... 2015? I guess Comment deleted
You could just tsc.exe and nobody was shoving Node.js in your face Comment deleted
what? that time should had been great Comment deleted
transport?: Car | Bus | Horse | Cat | any ; Comment deleted
lmao just look up React ts declarations Comment deleted
Typescript declrations for React framework. Comment deleted