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Ask HN: Help, I'm Drowning in JavaScript

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Re: Ask HN: Help, I'm Drowning in JavaScript

#11

Post by solardev »

solardev wrote: post #8

Hey, it's okay. I was in your exact boat a few years ago. Javascript has exploded in popularity in just a few years and yes, the ecosystem is horribly complex. It's an running gag even among full time JS devs how crazy it's gotten. None of us can keep up. It's OK. Just tackle it one step at a time. Forget Typescript for now. Don't use third party libraries until you need them. Arrow functions are optional. Ternaries…

Oh, and LinkedIn Learning is really excellent, if you want to learn the basics from an actual guided course. Very much worth it, and helped me go from casual vanilla JS to the more complex systems.

Re: Ask HN: Help, I'm Drowning in JavaScript

#14

Post by aristofun »

It looks like you’re lacking some fundamentals.

And not if/else type of, but rather oop, software design and organization of code kind of things.

What will help is to master a single decent beginners course that focuses on applying fundamentals to building practical projects. And it’s better to be python or ruby based course (to minimize friction and infra pain).

Don’t jump on anything else until you finished and have some coherent picture.

Only then you should proceed with learning other concepts bit by bit.

Js world looks complicated for beginners because of a diversity of tools and techniques like bundling, transpiling etc.

It is not easy to comprehend and it is not necessary, you just focus on your specific goals and moving from a goal to another goal you gradually build holistic picture.

You don’t just “get” Typescript etc. Im still learning typescript after 2 years professionally working with it.

Re: Ask HN: Help, I'm Drowning in JavaScript

#15

Post by haspok »

I would highly recommend learning FP fundamentals in another language, not Javascript.

For example, there is an excellent introductory FP course on Coursera by Martin Odersky ("Functional Programming Principles in Scala"). It happens to be based on the Scala language syntax, but most of what you learn there will be directly applicable in other FP languages too. For me, taking this course was a game changer ~10 years ago. Highly recommended.

Once you understand the basics, picking up stuff like "arrow functions" (lambdas) will be just a matter of adjusting to the JS syntax.

Re: Ask HN: Help, I'm Drowning in JavaScript

#17

Post by lordviet »

The journey ahead will be long but it's totally manageable if you put in the hours. First and foremost the whole situation gave you a glimpse of some of the things that are out there. It may lead you to more interesting and challenging work.

Nowadays the Internet is literally drowned in resources and you may quickly feel overwhelmed by everything. The trick here is to choose only a handful and stick with them for the time being.

Some of my personal favorites for starting out are https://www.freecodecamp.org/ to get your feet wet and up to speed with JS. You will build projects and explore some of the fancier syntax you saw.

You may also want to start building a strong CS foundation at some point. This is going to be really beneficial as you move forward. Arguably one the best (and completely free) resources for starting out is CS50 - https://cs50.harvard.edu/x/2022/.

Also don't follow courses blindly, take notes and try to implement things yourself. Moreover, start tinkering with some projects as soon as possible.

Good luck.

Re: Ask HN: Help, I'm Drowning in JavaScript

#18

Post by casual-dev »

solardev wrote: post #8

Hey, it's okay. I was in your exact boat a few years ago. Javascript has exploded in popularity in just a few years and yes, the ecosystem is horribly complex. It's an running gag even among full time JS devs how crazy it's gotten. None of us can keep up. It's OK. Just tackle it one step at a time. Forget Typescript for now. Don't use third party libraries until you need them. Arrow functions are optional. Ternaries…

Thanks for the kind words. Slowly going into the water is my approach as well, but sometimes it just gets to me. My learning projects die on the hill, because of the frustration I have on the job with these techniques. Plus, overwhelming ecosystem.

About my regex problem: This is a structual mess. JSON/XML with HTML code in the data fields. We process them and send them to multiple job boards. Our clients mainly use HRM software or some CMS, some of which are only able to spit out whatever HTML is displayed on their career sites. This code often does not even have classes or IDs. Most of the times we are dangling together whatever is between two headlines, praying those won't change. But they do, because the recruiters put fields, where they not belong. I call myself code cleaner, not web dev nowadays. We are not able to use APIs, because the receiving job boards either don't offer one, the client doesn't, or it's just not worth it financially.

I will take a step back and reevaluate my situation.

Re: Ask HN: Help, I'm Drowning in JavaScript

#19

Post by casual-dev »

potta_coffee wrote: post #2

You can learn ternary operators and arrow functions. I feel that you may be overwhelmed because you're trying to learn so much at one time. I've been in your shoes. If you keep trying, you will improve. Something I've done in the past is to write down everything I don't understand, and just chip away at that list daily by reading documentation and learning new things. Don't try to learn them all in one day.

Thanks, I just needed the hint to take a step back and reevaluate.

Having a wiki is a good tip, I already have started to maintain a small database with snippets I use often. But it's just that. My next focus will be having a project which does not have to many features. Baby steps it is.

Re: Ask HN: Help, I'm Drowning in JavaScript

#20

Post by casual-dev »

atoav wrote: post #6

Don't panic! Do not despair! Solve it like any big problem: you split it into smaller, managable chunks and tackle them systematically, one by one. For the syntax thing you might wanna pick out one particularily "bad" one and have your collegue explain it to you. Takes him maybe 15 mins and will safe you a good chunk of time. Where I work asking is expected. I ask our Network/Linix guru for things all the time. He as…

You are right, but me and my colleague are limited on time unfortunately, because there is so much work to do. I already asked him, if he could include me in his next project, just to watch, what he is doing from the boilerplate up. Maybe this clears out some of the question marks. And thank you for the resources. I already use regexr.com for visualisation, but this seems better for learning.
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