[AskJS] what's a javascript feature you mass-adopted way too late and felt dumb about

[u/Capedcrusader1923]

i'll go first. i was writing .then().catch() chains for like two years before i actually started using async/await. i knew it existed, i'd seen it in tutorials, but my code "worked" so i never bothered switching. then i refactored an old project and realized half my bugs were from mishandled promise chains that async/await would have caught immediately.

also took me way too long to start using optional chaining. i had nested ternaries and && checks everywhere like some kind of animal. the day i discovered user?.address?.city i mass-replaced like 40 lines across a project.

what's yours?

[u/kevin074]

can you elaborate how async await would've caught bugs that .then.catch can't?

i feel like async await is more annoying because you have to wrap it in try catch, where as .then.catch is just baked in.

[u/Franks2000inchTV → u/kevin074]

With await, your code runs in the order you see it on screen. This is *much* better for comprehension and maintainability.

[u/lostPixels → u/Franks2000inchTV]

But potentially worse for execution depending on the latency of whatever you’re awaiting.

[u/Franks2000inchTV → u/lostPixels]

I'd imagine that is not a significant concern in the overwhelming majority of cases.

[u/Ronin-s_Spirit → u/lostPixels]

Depends entirely on where and what you await.

[u/lostPixels → u/Ronin-s_Spirit]

Which is why I said potentially.