The nullish coalescing operator provides a precise way to handle null and undefined values without affecting other falsy values like empty strings or zero. As the creator of CoreUI, a widely used open-source UI library, I’ve used nullish coalescing extensively in JavaScript applications for safer default value assignment. From my experience, the nullish coalescing operator (??) is more reliable than logical OR (||) for default values because it only triggers for null and undefined. This operator prevents unexpected behavior with legitimate falsy values.