Understanding existing code is a big benefit of static types as well.

I’m sure one could argue that member names should obviate the need for type annotations.

There’s also the distinct possibility that my preceding ~15 years of statically-typed software development have affected how I think about software development in some way. (wink)

But I am finding type annotations internet useful while working on a huge application that is about 2 years into adding a gradual typing system, enough so that I usually take time whenever I enter a new code area to add annotations to everything, just to understand what’s going on.

My perception is that I invest time to build understanding of the types, and then document what I’ve learned in the form of these type annotations so that future maintainers then gain a quicker understanding without having to do the initial research.

At least my non-statistically-significantly-sized team agrees.