I'd say the elvis operator would make things worse, especially wrt the parent post. The problem isn't that `user && user.username` style validation is verbose,

I'd say the elvis operator would make things worse, especially wrt the parent post. The problem isn't that `user && user.username` style validation is verbose, but that it's very error-prone. Making it less verbose just means you'll more likely use it before you reach for a better validation strategy, like a declarative validation library.