This _is_ how strict types work. Problems creep in when people introduce lax types into the strict type system.
dict[str, Any] is a type, and sometimes it is the right type to specify, but most of the time it's used by someone who wants to shut up the type checker rather than think about the right type.
In my case it's actually that there was no type annotation for the first N years of the project (long before I joined) and a couple people started using them in advisory mode but with no enforcement.
Just a huge mess. One reason I'm not a big fan of python for large projects.
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