100 JavaScript Interview Questions & Answers

Primitives are immutable and compared by value; everything else is an object, compared by reference. typeof null famously returns "object" — a long-standing quirk from JavaScript's earliest implementation, not a meaningful design choice.

"5" + 3;     // "53" — + prefers string concatenation if either operand is a string
"5" - 3;     // 2   — - forces both operands to numbers
5 + true;    // 6   — true coerces to 1
5 + null;    // 5   — null coerces to 0
5 + undefined; // NaN — undefined coerces to NaN

JavaScript automatically converts values between types when an operator expects a type that doesn't match what it was given — the rules aren't arbitrary (+ leans toward string concatenation, most other arithmetic operators force numeric conversion), but they're easy to get wrong from memory, which is exactly why === and explicit conversions (Number(), String()) are generally preferred over relying on implicit coercion.

console.log(x);   // undefined, not an error — the declaration is hoisted
var x = 5;

console.log(y);    // ReferenceError — let/const are hoisted but not initialized
let y = 5;

sayHi();            // works — function declarations are fully hoisted
function sayHi() { console.log("hi"); }

Hoisting is the JS engine's behavior of processing declarations before executing code line by line — var declarations are hoisted and initialized to undefined; let/const are hoisted but stay in an uninitialized "temporal dead zone" until their actual declaration line runs; function declarations are hoisted with their full body, which is why you can call a function defined later in the same file.

"5" == 5;    // true  — == coerces types before comparing
"5" === 5;   // false — === compares both value AND type, no coercion
null == undefined;   // true
null === undefined;  // false

== performs type coercion before comparing, which produces surprising results often enough that === (strict equality — same value and same type, no coercion) is the near-universal default recommendation in modern JS style guides.

function makeCounter() {
  let count = 0;
  return function () {
    count++;             // still has access to 'count' after makeCounter returns
    return count;
  };
}

const counter = makeCounter();
counter();   // 1
counter();   // 2 — the SAME count variable persists across calls

A closure is a function that retains access to variables from its enclosing scope even after that outer function has finished executing — the inner function "closes over" count, keeping it alive in memory for as long as the closure itself exists. Closures are the mechanism behind private variables (before classes had real private fields), memoization, and much of functional-style JS.

const obj = {
  name: "Ada",
  greet() { console.log(this.name); }   // 'this' is obj — called as obj.greet()
};
obj.greet();   // "Ada"

const greetFn = obj.greet;
greetFn();     // undefined (or throws in strict mode) — 'this' lost its binding

const arrow = () => console.log(this);   // arrow functions don't have their own 'this' —
                                            // they capture it from the enclosing scope

this refers to whatever object the function was called ON, not where it was defined — which is exactly why extracting a method and calling it standalone (greetFn() above) loses the intended this. Arrow functions deliberately don't have their own this at all; they inherit it lexically from the surrounding scope, which is why they're commonly used for callbacks that need to preserve an outer this.

const name = "Ada";
const greeting = `Hello, ${name}! Today is ${new Date().toDateString()}.`;

// Multi-line strings, no concatenation needed:
const html = `
  <div>
    <p>${name}</p>
  </div>
`;

Template literals (backtick-delimited strings) support embedded expressions (${...}) and multi-line text directly, without the string-concatenation gymnastics ('Hello, ' + name + '!') older syntax required.