Matt - I think you've misinterpreted the example problem: the string being passed in dataFromBackend.age can't be converted to a number; so your proposed solution could still cause a crash. The main problem lies here (my emphasis below):
You think your incoming web service values are strings
Actually you "think" your values are numbers masquerading as strings but you still don't have an absolute guarantee*; so you need to add some kind of guard in the code that converts to number to handle non-standard data. Without suitable handling your entire application could crash. As an extreme example I know of an OS map library that would crash your browser and require a reboot if you passed it a string instead of a number...
* except maybe if your backend is written in Typescript and shares the same type-definition
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Matt - I think you've misinterpreted the example problem: the string being passed in
dataFromBackend.agecan't be converted to a number; so your proposed solution could still cause a crash. The main problem lies here (my emphasis below):Actually you "think" your values are numbers masquerading as strings but you still don't have an absolute guarantee*; so you need to add some kind of guard in the code that converts to number to handle non-standard data. Without suitable handling your entire application could crash. As an extreme example I know of an OS map library that would crash your browser and require a reboot if you passed it a string instead of a number...
* except maybe if your backend is written in Typescript and shares the same type-definition