Question

I’m coming from statically typed languages like C++ where there are tools (the compiler for one) that will remind me if I forget something obvious while refactoring. For example, if I change the number of arguments to a function but I forget to change all the calls to it. But it seems really easy to make this type of mistake in javascript. How do you avoid problems like this when refactoring javascript?

Answer 1

just like you do in c++/java. By writing tests.

Unit tests are the best. If you code is MVC, then you can certainly have unit tests with little effort, at least for the model layer. The benefit is you get feedback immediately. Check out QUnit

Functional tests via Selenium or equivalent are good too. They will find problems, but not immediately.