I think it's the fact there are no compile times (those runtime tools you are talking about are at your fingertips) that people historically have not worried as

I think it's the fact there are no compile times (those runtime tools you are talking about are at your fingertips) that people historically have not worried as much about types in PHP and JS. In many cases it does just feel like verbose boilerplate rather than a useful tool. Type checking is just one of the many things you can test by hitting ctrl+R, and you will be doing that anyways to test everything else. (Obviously, the bigger the project, the less that is true, but that argument is well-known). Personally, I spend exponentially more time correcting my typos than my types, and auto-completion of previous used variables and functions is worth a lot more than a type system to me in my day to day. I will never argue against types, but unless I am working with somebody else, I don't need them.