Daily Software Tips & Tricks
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Cleaner Logic with Nullish Coalescing
March 6, 2026
Stop writing deeply nested `if` statements or long `&&` chains just to check if a property exists. Use optional chaining (`?.`) to safely access nested properties without throwing an error if a parent is null. Pair this with the nullish coalescing operator (`??`) to provide a fallback value only when the result is `null` or `undefined`. Unlike the logical OR (`||`), it won't trigger on "falsy" values like `0` or an empty string, which prevents a lot of common UI bugs.