You're Probably Doing TypeScript Wrong (But I'm Here to Help)

TypeScript surfaces complexity rather than reducing it. That one idea explains most of the frustration people have with it. If your system has fuzzy boundaries, ambiguous states, or data you don't actually trust, TypeScript will surface those problems immediately. Fight the type system instead of fixing the underlying issues, and you get the worst of both worlds: a false sense of safety and a codebase nobody wants to touch. I've shipped plenty of TypeScript I wouldn't defend in court. This isn't a purity lecture. It's the practical stuff: the places teams go wrong, and the patterns that actually help. 1) TypeScript isn't a safety net. It's a boundary tool. The most common TypeScript failure mode is assuming it protects you from bad data, and it doesn't. TypeScript is compile-time. Your production failures are runtime. That gap matters most at the edges of your system: request bodies, API responses, environment variables, database rows, message payloads. If you tell TypeScript "this is