Cannot read property 'nativeOption' of undefined

From what I can see it works fine. Check out this snippet: https://mdbootstrap.com/snippets/standard/grzegorz-bujanski/2884417#js-tab-view

If the select instance is rendered at runtime from a template after page load using DOMContentLoaded event should help:

window.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', () => {
    const singleSelect = document.querySelector('#singleSelection');
    const singleSelectInstance = mdb.Select.getInstance(singleSelect);
    singleSelectInstance.setValue('4');
});

This occurs when you attempt to set the selected option, but the provided value doesn't exist for any of the options in the select.

It can be reproduced by simply providing a value which doesn't exist among the options.

https://mdbootstrap.com/snippets/standard/falk/2882248

The console shows the same error. An ideal solution here would probably be to provide a more coherent error message, which orientates a developer towards the actual problem.

We do not plan to introduce such messages at the moment. This would require a lot of code to be added. Unfortunately, this will have an impact on the performance of applications in which MDB will be used.

try {
    // existing code
} catch(e) {
    // check for known case
    if (e instanceof TypeError && e.message.indexOf('nativeOption') !== -1) {
        // chose RangeError here, but you may have internal MDB error classes
        throw new RangeError('Option with given value not found in select element');
        // or don't throw and just ignore call to select an unknown option
    }

    throw e; // throw original exception if anything else
}

So, not that difficult. Not sure about the overhead you're referring to, this code only executes when the error occurs.