>not having them only means not having typing on externals
AllowJS didn't exist until mid-late last year, so using JS libraries was pretty disastrous before that. That definitely fueled a part of my rant. I find this absolutely shocking, for a language that purports to work with JavaScript.
JS modules actually still do not work right for me, as TSC can no longer resolve node modules. I've searched far an wide and found others with the exact same problems and no solutions. It happened suddenly and without cause.
Nor does the IDE integration work for me at all. I've actually done completely fresh installations of the IDEs I've tried but nothing would resolve the issues I faced. I'm stuck with a dud of a VS2015 which can't recognize jQuery from npm. VS2017 can resolve the same modules but fails elsewhere.
It then proceeded to choke on a JS library that uses its own Promise polyfill, yet provided a d.ts file.
No snark, I am genuinely glad it worked well for you. But for me, it's overly laborious getting it to work right, and I've had enough of things like ///<reference> and d.ts files and reconfiguring tsconfig.json.
Although Typescript started a bit as you say, complex tooling, had to write external type declaration to have the typing for external libraries (but they are optional, not having them only means not having typing on externals, which is fine in many cases, so not in the way at all), but overall, typing provided so many benefits it was already worth it to me: litterally saved me hundreds of bugs found at compile-time, and keeps the maintenance of the code base cheap and easy. But typescript evolved a lot, now the typing declaration are based on npm, the compiler got faster by an order of magnitude, it provides services to the IDE, and so on.
I just wouldn't start a new project with a reasonable expected lifespan without typescript.