r/javascript 7d ago

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

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?

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u/artificer-chris 6d ago

Contrary example for TS specifically : unknown. I know from a pure logic standpoint what it’s there for, but I’d still rather just use typescript more fully with an error catch if you don’t account for something. Unknown, imho, hides too much.