The deeper problem is that JS is not strongly typed. Typescript gives you static type checks but the runtime is still weakly typed and will still do all sorts of weird type conversions.

Theoretically, to what extend could the weird type conversions be prevented with the use of a strict linter? My intuition would be all, but I haven't thought much about it.

Once code reaches a certain complexity level (and mind you, the threshold is rather low), you'll need dynamic generation of code and data (or else, write 10x the amount of lines of code). For this to happen in a safe way, you really, really, do need the runtime to be strictly typed.

Are you making this claim about JavaScript or as a general statement? I've probably written less than 1000 lines of JS ever (and that only for hobby projects), but I would strongly disagree with this statement as applied to C++, Java, etc.

I'm sorry, I'm confused by the way you expressed that. The argument was you need strict typing for large projects. C++ and Java have strict typing. What exactly is the basis of your strong disagreement?

My comment is applied to any language with weak typing. Example: Javascript, PHP, and (sadly) C, particularly when using pointers to void. However, in C it's okay since there are big performance gains when you have full control of the memory.

Strong typing is a start but not enough for my taste. Static typing serves as documentation and compile time bug check, which is awesome to have. I'd like to have both, without the detour over typescript.

I don't think you're going to get strong types in standard JavaScript any time soon. Isn't TypeScript a very good compromise right now?

My take is that having dynamic typing plus strong typing is a (pretty) good compromise. And static typing plus weak typing, insufficient.

What languages would you put in these two categories?

Not all languages but here's a list:

dynamic typing, strong typing: python (for the most part), Scheme

dynamic typing, weak typing: Javascript, PHP

static typing, strong typing: Pascal, Ada, Java, C#

static typing, weak typing: C, Typescript, perhaps others

SPECIAL CASES:

strongly typed, dynamically typed, but with some compilers it can also be statically typed: Common Lisp

strongly typed, statically typed but can infer types: Haskell, ML family

strongly typed, can infer type with "auto" keyword: C++ (latest version)

non-typed: Machine language, assembler, perhaps Forth

What better alternative do you have to TypeScript right now though that you can use practically with existing libraries? Perfect is the enemy of good. TypeScript can capture more complex properties than C as well.

I agree. On the whole, I think JS is a middlingly-nice language. It has some good bits and some bad bits. ES6 brings a whole lot more good bits.

I sometimes think we could do with a bit more thanking-our-lucky-stars that the language that got entrenched on the web wasn't, say, VBScript (which IE did use to support).

For your major drawback, there's TypeScript.

The real issue with js (node) as a "scripting language" is the lack of a stdlib. A nice thing about writing a Python script is you know the stdlib is there on your remote machine (since some version of Python is on most systems by default other than windows).

Indeed, although Typescript is a good solution to have more OOP based abstractions, like Generics, Abstract Classes and Interfaces.