Daily Software Tips & Tricks

We have all seen the dreaded "Cannot read property of undefined" error. Instead of writing long, defensive chains like if (user && user.profile && user.profile.name), start using the optional chaining operator (?.). It safely short-circuits the evaluation, returning undefined if any part of the chain is missing.

Pair this with the nullish coalescing operator (??) to provide a sensible default value. This combo makes your logic much more readable and prevents your application from crashing when an API response does not quite look the way you expected.