Inspect the caught error, handle only the cases you understand, and rethrow the rest. A blanket catch that absorbs every error masks unrelated bugs.
Over-broad catch blocks intercept unexpected errors they were never meant to handle, hiding real defects.
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A catch receives every error, not just the one you anticipated. If you only know how to recover from a specific failure (e.g. a 404), handle that and rethrow everything else so genuine bugs still surface.
// Bad — absorbs unrelated errors too
try {
return await fetchUser(id);
} catch {
return null; // a network bug now looks like "user not found"
}
// Good — narrow, then rethrow the rest
try {
return await fetchUser(id);
} catch (err) {
if (err instanceof NotFoundError) return null;
throw err;
}