> with Babel you can use TypeScript

Be careful with throwing "idiocy" at otehrs when it seems you yourself don't even know what you are talking about. To write TypeScript you use... TypeScript (their compiler).

Thanks the Babel thing was incorrect, Typescript is separate.

To clarify, I'm certainly not implying this person is an idiot. I'm saying, they lean toward thinking that the typing system is more of a bad idea (idiocy) than a valid tradeoff.

Yes, that's accurate.

I don't think typescript is necessarily the answer though. You don't fix the problems caused by weak implicit type casts with static typing, you do it by turning off weak implicit type casting and raising a lot more type errors.