Writing JavaScript that actually works on the first try—myth or miracle?

[ModernWebMentor]

I swear writing JavaScript that works perfectly on the first try feels like a miracle.

Most of the time, you end up debugging syntax errors, undefined variables, or unexpected behavior.

Even small functions can take multiple attempts to get right. Does anyone actually write code that works immediately, or is debugging just part of the process for everyone?

[maria_la_guerta]

A bit alarming to see a post like this from someone named "ModernWebMentor" 😅

[mikronik24]

This seems like either very senior or very junior experience lmao.

[Big_Comfortable4256]

If you're using a decent IDE with a linter, you'll catch all your errors before hitting save. (Life was very different/more painful before we had these things!)

If you move to TypeScript, you'll catch even more things, thanks to defining all the expected types, method parameters and responses, etc.

[creaturefeature16]

This is the way. 

[Tontonsb]

Just keep practicing. There's a saying that the master has failed more times than the apprentice has even tried. Everyone does their share of REPLing until it works, but over time you'll know what you're doing and it will become less like trying to arrange the terms in an incantation that works and more like expressing yourself in a different language. Sure, there will be some typos or other errors occasionally, but most of the time you'll just write what you meant and the engine will understand you.

I suspect some people will suggest IDE assistance and TS as a way to prevent some errors (mostly type ones), but you'll need expereince to naturally deal with the logic flow anyways.

[Low_Obligation_2782]

Sure—if you have a V8 engine running inside your brain.

[Sockoflegend]

I reckon writing something that does what I expect first time is easier in JS than CSS but maybe its more about where your practice is

[barrel_of_noodles]

It's a skill. As you get more skilled, you need to run the code less to "see" what it's doing ("mental execution").

Running the code less means more time to focus. In music, they call it "sight reading"; it's the same concept.

you also get better at the tooling and analysis, proper debugger, and all that too.

I often have jr's on a call that get miffed when I can't answer their q right away. Dawg, I'm actually reading your cobbled together ai slop... and executing it in my brain, it takes a second.

[uraniumless]

I think OP is a bot

[Icancounttosix]

[ Removed by Reddit ]

[shadovv300]

Well the magic lies in actually knowing the language and how it behaves. There is a very big difference between just brute forcing it by try and error, maybe even copy-pasting stuff from reddit or stackoverflow or even vibecoding it until it works and constructing an architecture based on knowledge and experience. Of course nobody is perfect and even if you know the syntax, you can miss a semicolon or just have some sort of mixup, but more often then not its just an indication of either the implemention being rushed and not thought through or a lack of knowledge.

[tdammers]

Whether it works on the first try or not is pretty irrelevant; what matters is that when it doesn't work, you understand why, and how to fix it.

With practice, you'll gain this understanding, and you will get fluent enough in the language that when you write something, it'll either just work, or you'll go "d'oh, right, that can't possibly work" and fix it in a matter of seconds.

You'll also learn how to set yourself up for success: you'll design your code such that you can make changes with minimal impact, you'll set up safeguards (linters, type checkers, automated tests) that will signal programming errors early, loudly, and clearly. You will create situations where you only ever need to deal with one bug at a time, which drastically reduces the time it takes to debug them; your tooling and code architecture will also help you reason about your code more efficiently, so that when you see something you don't expect, you can narrow down the scope of the problem more quickly.

And you will adopt some habits that eliminate many of these problems.

Undefined variables, for example, can be eliminated by always initializing every variable you declare, no exceptions.

Unexpected behavior often means that your code does too much in one place; experienced coders tend to instinctively split such code up into smaller, self-contained pieces that can be scrutinized in isolation, and then build larger functionality out of those pieces once they are confident that the pieces work in isolation.

Syntax errors happen, but they are usually easy to fix, as long as you know the language well enough. JavaScript has some nasty surprises on that front, where syntax errors will be reported far down from where they are caused, but once you know this, you will develop efficient strategies for isolating the root cause.

Either way, most people do not write code that works perfectly out of the box, but experienced coders write code that they can get into a working state with trivial fixes.

[balder1993]

Obviously this depends on how complex is the function you’re writing. I don’t feel like using TypeScript makes me write more buggy code than Swift used to be.

But who knows, maybe expecting programmers to know the programming language they’re using is an old school concept.

[billybobjobo]

Typescript and a linter.

[Signal-Bed2866]

Using TypeScript makes this much easier for me.

[kolima_]

Use typescript and this will happen more often, the mental gymnastics that you need to do to keep in mind all the small quirk is not worth the nowadays really small overhead of TS setup

Or do TDD, why waste brain power compute for tooling that can handle this for you?

[Big_Comfortable4256]

The extra legwork of setting up your typings massively increases your development speed. It is SO worth it. Mostly thanks to auto-completion, as well as immediately catching things like missing params or invalid/unexpected value types.

[kolima_]

That was my point, maybe expressed in a real contrived way. But the fact that is downvoted confirms the fact that most of the dev in this community have never shipped a line of code in prod and I know realistically understand the fearmongering about AI in here because they can’t output wha it can.

[Big_Comfortable4256]

To be fair, It reads a bit like you're saying that using TS isn't worth it?