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 25 years of experience in web development, 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.