If it catches bugs before run-time, that's a benefit to me, in the same way that testing doesn't catch all bugs (and yes, can introduce a false sense of security), but most people still think it's a good idea.

You obviously don't get the haskell experience, where if your program type checks it's probably correct, but the alternative (if, remember, you want a dynamically typed scripting language) is no type checking, which is definitely worse for some people.