Discussion on: globalThis is coming to JavaScript

[Seanmclem]

What might be a use-case where I would want a globalThis instead of just manually accessing window, or this?

[Laurie]

It's a standard. So it will work consistently regardless of what environment the code is run in.

[Rasmus Wennerström]

"As consistent as it can get".

Different global objects will expose very different APIs, so now instead of having to check if (typeof global !== 'undefined') global.nodeFeature(), you can now check:

if (globalThis.nodeFeature) { 
  globalThis.nodeFeature();
} else if (globalThis.webFeature) { 
  globalThis.webFeature();
}

I think it's useful, but it's just kind of deferring the problem, as you will still have to write platform-specific abstractions.

[Seanmclem]

Yeah I guess that was my concern. If the different 'this' you're targeting can have radically different APIs, I would wonder why target them with a single globalThis instead of individually. I figured I was missing something..