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hmza

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🧠 How to Know You Have JavaScript Issues (Before Your Users Riot)

🧠 How to Know You Have JavaScript Issues (Before Your Users Riot)

JavaScript is sneaky. Everything looks fine... until it explodes at runtime 💥. Here's how to spot the red flags early and fix them before they become chaos.


1. 🚨 Your Console Looks Like a Horror Movie

 // Example: Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined 
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🧠 If you're seeing red messages in the console — trust me — you're doing something wrong. Debug it before pushing to production.


2. 🧩 Things Only Work Sometimes (aka The Schrodinger Bug)

Random button clicks work sometimes, or a function behaves weirdly depending on what page you're on?

 if (user = "admin") { // oops, assignment instead of comparison! 
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🧠 If your app is haunted, check your conditions and scope handling.


3. 🦥 Page Loads Are Suspiciously Slow

Using too many await calls or heavy computations in the main thread?

 await getUserData(); await getPosts(); await getNotifications(); // Sluggish mess 
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🧠 Time to learn about Promise.all() and non-blocking rendering.


4. 🧟‍♂️ Memory Leaks and Dead Listeners

When your browser tab eats 2GB RAM and your PC starts heating up...

 window.addEventListener("resize", myHandler); // added 100x, never removed 
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🧠 Clean up your listeners and intervals with .removeEventListener() or clearInterval().


5. 🥴 You Can’t Reproduce the Bug… But the User Can

That one user says "it crashes every time", but everything's perfect for you.

🧠 This usually means:

  • You rely on user-specific data
  • You make assumptions (e.g., assuming localStorage always exists)
  • Your code is not cross-browser compatible

6. 📦 You Forgot to Import Something (Or Imported It Wrong)

 ReferenceError: React is not defined 
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🧠 Make sure your imports are correct, and you're not mixing ESM and CommonJS without knowing what you're doing.


7. 🔄 Infinite Loops or Rerenders

 useEffect(() => { fetchData(); }, [data]); // oops, data changes on every render 
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🧠 Be careful with dependencies in React hooks. Also... don’t forget to use a return function for cleanup!


✅ Conclusion: Red Flags to Watch For

  • Red console errors
  • Memory spikes
  • Weird re-renders
  • Random "undefined is not a function"
  • Users reporting strange stuff you can't reproduce

🔍 Use tools like:

  • Chrome DevTools
  • ESLint
  • Lighthouse
  • TypeScript (it yells at you before runtime)

Stay paranoid. Stay bug-free. 🐞💻


Javascript Sucks

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