var self = this;

If you are using JS, then you don't know who is yourself, right? :)

@skiilaa It's a constant battle for my sanity!

Is this an antipattern? I've been doing this for ages!

Wait a minute, self is not a reserved word in js rigth? So you will assign context/window object to self. Or is it? ..

Why is that bad?
Only I use 'that' for this (pun intended)

@featurenotbug @Brachacz It's "bad" because you can use bind/call/apply to set context for functions since ES3. And since ES6 you can just use arrow functions.

There is a decent functional reason for doing this. If you are binding event handlers in inner methods, but still need a reference to the parent object, self will then reference the parent. You can get around this other ways. However just renaming "this" for the sake of it is beyond annoying.