Ask HN: Help, I'm Drowning in JavaScript

I've had a rough day yesterday. I'm a web dev, but read that as in "I learnt HTML in the 90s and worked on small projects maintaining websites". Hence the username. On my current job I'm working with a proprietary software, which uses VanillaJS to modify XML/JSON files to make the data useable for our company. I'm not the dumbest person on the planet, or so I believe, I understand what coding is, I understand the fundamentals.

Yesterday I spent 4 hours regexing out HTML data from not so well maintained data sources and screamed at my computer, because I was not able to find patterns. I know, please don't ask. This is not high level programming. We're talking .replace and .match, with the occaisonal if/else over hundreds of sets. My colleague calmed me down and took the time to help me. Bless him. This colleague has multiple projects within the company, because, to me, he is a modern web dev: Building scrapers from scratch with Node, uses multiple frameworks, you get the jist.

My path in this company should have been: Learning the code he writes, so I can help him maintaining the software and be on standby, if something breaks. This won't be happening in the forseeable future.

My problem: I do not understand his code. Or anyone elses. While I basically use if/else, he uses ternary operators. I write functions by hand, the uses arrow functions and symbols I can hardly understand. Multiple generations of Javascript foundation changes and yearly new crazes are lying between us. We do not have the time to code review his projects. Also, he should not be my teacher. But: I want to be able to help him and not be a burden.

I tried $learnToCode websites, YouTube tutorials, bought "Master Classes" from the usual suspects. But I'm literally drowning in the market of javascript. There is no clean line learning "This is the 2000s" to "Welcome to the year 2022" javascript.

For example, I do not get Typescript; I do not understand, how big projects can use Node, with it's thousands of dependencies, while nobody cares, that 20 to 100 of them are deprecated, or in short: I do not understand, how this whole eco system works. But I want to. Do you have any suggestions on how to unclutter this mess, which absolutely overwhelms me?

Seconding this. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the seeming combinatorial complexity of things. Just start a little personal wiki (eg, arrow syntax, structural typing, etc) and it’ll help you decompose things into more easily understandable pieces (it’s easier to multiply 7x5x21x22 than to factor 16170, if that makes sense).

I can see how it can be overwhelming, as with everything the beginning is the hardest but it will get easier over time. Seeing a ternary the tenth time will be much easier than the first.

I would look for the old-ish articles and tutorials that introduce es6, for example: https://babeljs.io/docs/en/learn/ idk if you need to go earlier, but surely there are tons of articles on each update to the language.

I think it's good to realize most of it is not new, it's largely the same stuff, just slightly different and more convenient.

You can't parse [X]HTML with regex. Because HTML can't be parsed by regex. Regex is not a tool that can be used to correctly parse HTML. As I have answered in HTML-and-regex questions here so many times before, the use of regex will not allow you to consume HTML. Regular expressions are a tool that is insufficiently sophisticated to understand the constructs employed by HTML. HTML is not a regular language and hence cannot be parsed by regular expressions. Regex queries are not equipped to break down HTML into its meaningful parts. so many times but it is not getting to me. Even enhanced irregular regular expressions as used by Perl are not up to the task of parsing HTML. You will never make me crack. HTML is a language of sufficient complexity that it cannot be parsed by regular expressions. Even Jon Skeet cannot parse HTML using regular expressions. Every time you attempt to parse HTML with regular expressions, the unholy child weeps the blood of virgins, and Russian hackers pwn your webapp. Parsing HTML with regex summons tainted souls into the realm of the living. HTML and regex go together like love, marriage, and ritual infanticide. The cannot hold it is too late. The force of regex and HTML together in the same conceptual space will destroy your mind like so much watery putty. If you parse HTML with regex you are giving in to Them and their blasphemous ways which doom us all to inhuman toil for the One whose Name cannot be expressed in the Basic Multilingual Plane, he comes. HTML-plus-regexp will liquify the n erves of the sentient whilst you observe, your psyche withering in the onslaught of horror. Rege̿̔̉x-based HTML parsers are the cancer that is killing StackOverflow it is too late it is too late we cannot be saved the transgression of a chi͡ld ensures regex will consume all living tissue (except for HTML which it cannot, as previously prophesied) dear lord help us how can anyone survive this scourge using regex to parse HTML has doomed humanity to an eternity of dread torture and security holes using regex as a tool to process HTML establishes a breach between this world and the dread realm of c͒ͪo͛ͫrrupt entities (like SGML entities, but more corrupt) a mere glimpse of the world of reg ex parsers for HTML will ins tantly transport a programmer's consciousness into a world of ceaseless screaming, he comes, the pestilent slithy regex-infection wil l devour your HT ML parser, application and existence for all time like Visual Basic only worse he comes he comes do not fi ght he com̡e̶s, ̕h̵i s un̨ho͞ly radiańcé destro҉ying all enli̍̈́̂̈́ghtenment, HTML tags lea͠ki̧n͘g fr̶ǫm ̡yo ͟ur eye͢s̸ ̛l̕ik͏e liq uid pain, the song of re̸gular exp ression parsing will exti nguish the voices of mor tal man from the sp here I can see it can you see ̲͚̖͔̙î̩́t̲͎̩̱͔́̋̀ it is beautiful t he final snuffing of the lie s of Man ALL IS LOŚ͖̩͇̗̪̏̈́T ALL I S LOST the pon̷y he comes he c̶̮omes he comes the ich or permeates all MY FACE MY FACE ᵒh god no NO NOO̼O O NΘ stop the an *̶͑̾̾ ̅ͫ͏̙̤g͇̫͛͆̾ͫ̑͆l͖͉̗̩̳̟̍ͫͥͨe̠̅s ͎a̧͈͖r̽̾̈́͒͑e n ot rè̑ͧ̌aͨl̘̝̙̃ͤ͂̾̆ ZA̡͊͠͝LGΌ ISͮ̂҉̯͈͕̹̘̱ TO͇̹̺ͅƝ̴ȳ̳ TH̘Ë͖́̉ ͠P̯͍̭O̚ N̐Y̡ H̸̡̪̯ͨ͊̽̅̾̎Ȩ̬̩̾͛ͪ̈́̀́͘ ̶̧̨̱̹̭̯ͧ̾ͬC̷̙̲̝͖ͭ̏ͥͮ͟Oͮ͏̮̪̝͍M̲̖͊̒ͪͩͬ̚̚͜Ȇ̴̟̟͙̞ͩ͌͝S̨̥̫͎̭ͯ̿̔̀ͅ

Have you tried using an XML parser instead?

- https://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454

With that aside, for parsing HTML with node, use cheerio. It has a jQuery-style API and IIRC is more lightweight than jsdom (which is what I'd suggest if cheerio isn't enough). If you're parsing HTML in a browser, you don't need any libraries, use a DOMParser. Arrow functions are just normal functions but with `this` automatically bound to the `this` of the scope they are in. MDN is your friend.