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How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

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Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#71

Post by mpwoz »

alexmuro wrote: post #51

If you are doing a simple project, there is nothing wrong with just using jquery (or imho d3). If you know that your project is always going to be pretty simple or especially if you are learning. I have been teaching a number of people javascript at my lab lately and I think its unwise to teach new javascripters using any of the modern tools or transpiling until someone runs into one the problems that those tools sol…

This needs to be higher.

You shouldn't use any of these tools just because people tell you to. If you can't see what problem something solves, then start at a simpler/lower level of abstraction until you run into that problem, and can appreciate the tool that solves it.

Of course, this advice doesn't apply if you actually need to write a production app, and aren't just playing around for learning purposes :)

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#72

Post by Fuzzwah »

voidfunc wrote: post #64

Just a couple days I got into a conversation with my coworker about UI stuff. I had to test something against our dev UI. Last time I did UI work was back when having index.html, img/, css/ and js/ directories with maybe a script or two was the norm. I had to fucking run make and I still have no fucking idea what was going on when I ran make which compiled a bunch of shit. There was all this NPM shit going on (isn't…

I'm a content guy who knows enough web dev to be dangerous.

I made 3 manual edits to a css file to fix a couple of incorrect background colours in our web content the other day. I was a good boy and made a pull request for those same changes in the git repo.

Our developer explained that he doesn't actually edit the css file. He would have to work out the change in the hue (as a percent of the base colour) and update that in the sass file, then use gulp to compile a fresh version of the output css.

He said that this was a simple build process to get set up on my machine so I could do it myself in the future.

He uses a mac. I use windows.

4 hours later after hitting so many hurdles I finally got it working. I can't even recall all the issues, but do recall that I side stepped them all by moving to a particular version of npm which actually used a sane system for storing the dependencies.

With out that version of npm this simple build process required 15,000 files in my node_modules subdirectory in a structure so deep and convoluted Windows couldn't create them....

Of course now that I'm armed with the toolset to make these changes I've reverted to testing changes in chrome dev tools and emailing him requests.

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#73

Post by adamrezich »

Cross-posting my comment from reddit:

I don't know about anyone else, but the problem I personally have with the crazy, messy JavaScript ecosystem is:

- I am a relatively experienced amateur programmer (with limited [nine months] professional experience)

- I can learn any new programming language, library, methodology, or whatever pretty easily

- I don't have any formal experience using anything of this newfangled stuff; like the author of the article, my frontend experience involves plain ol HTML/CSS/JS, with a little jQuery to make things easier

- nobody wants to hire me unless I have `n` years experience with newfangled language/framework/methodology `x`, `y`, and `z`

- I don't have a CS degree

Unless you're a massive operation like Facebook or something... just give me a week to look through your website's codebase, I'll figure out how you guys do things and I'll start being productive before you know it. If you're using stuff that I've never used before, I'll learn it.

I should be a more attractive hire than someone who has `n` years of experience only using `x`, `y`, or `z`, because the way I think about getting things done with computers isn't tied down to any one specific framework... but it seems that this isn't how hiring works in the industry right now... which is directly at odds with the rapidly-changing nature of web development!

As a result, I don't feel inclined to learn any of this new crap. What's the point? Apparently I should've learned it all `n` years ago, and it's too late now?

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#74

Post by wamatt »

gadrev wrote: post #6

This was actually a didactic piece. While criticizing the current state of affairs, it gives a nice overview of many of the emerging technologies and how they fit together, even if for some tasks it feels retarded to pull such an entangled mess of dependencies. You can then go insane diving into any particular one :)

>This was actually a didactic piece.

As a matter of curiosity, would you mind unpacking this statement?

Not really sure if you mean to say the piece imparts a moral lesson. Or perhaps it relates to the writing aesthetics; Or something else

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#75

Post by [deleted] »

tibbon wrote: post #11

This is pretty much why I don't do front-end. I'm fully capable of it, but I just don't like keeping up with this flavor-of-the-week. It just doesn't feel like programming to me, or at least not the programming I enjoy. Strangely, I see so many new developers rushing toward the front-end, which seems much more complicated in many ways than just building solid web API services, analyzing data, etc.

[deleted]

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#76

Post by nikdaheratik »

adamrezich wrote: post #73

Cross-posting my comment from reddit: I don't know about anyone else, but the problem I personally have with the crazy, messy JavaScript ecosystem is: - I am a relatively experienced amateur programmer (with limited [nine months] professional experience) - I can learn any new programming language, library, methodology, or whatever pretty easily - I don't have any formal experience using anything of this newfangled st…

It sounds like your gripe isn't with the knowledge base, but with the people doing the hiring. The issues there are very real in that, if you're dealing with a non-trivial codebase, there's no way to tell whether someone with very little real world experience is a competent programmer or just "faking" until you've got them working on it for a few weeks, and even then they may not be worth the time you put into training them until a couple of months down the line. And the people in HR for most organisations don't have a clue how to tell the difference.

So they make up a bunch of gatekeeper requirements that allow them to filter out anyone that doesn't fit the mold early in the process. They're still likely to find someone who can do the work this way even if it means throwing out a decent percentage of other candidates.

It's messed up, but it's kind of where the lack of technical knowledge in HR, and the need to avoid any potential lawsuits have left us.

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#77

Post by gettersetter »

tibbon wrote: post #19
choicewords wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a money issue. If you do keep up, you'll get amazing job offers. If you manage to really be on the edge, you can give talks as well, expose yourself as a consultant. That's much easier in JS than with Ruby, Python or whatever else.

Fair enough. I've hit a sweet spot now in having done Ruby for ~8 years, so I can get away with saying, "having someone else deal with the front end. I just want to talk about data". The new problems I'm working to learn to solve are with ML, NLP, etc. I'd like to step away from web services completely soon, and just live completely with data.

I am curious, how did you transition into ml, nlp. I am thinking of transitioning to ml, as work is getting kind of boring for me, but most job requires at least a master in the relevant field. I am self studying right now, maybe going back for a master, but I felt I lack alot of necessary probability and linear algebra theorems. I can code svm, neural network from nothing. I understand basic markov chain, bayes network, but that is really just scratching the surface. Any recommendations?

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#78

Post by greg5green »

blacksmythe wrote: post #55
FrancoDiaz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "flavor of the week" is mostly a meme. You would be fine just learning ES6, a front-end technology like Angular or React, and a bundler like Webpack. Learning Webpack is painful, but there are other choices. The front-end is harder IMHO, but as another poster mentioned, the opportunities are tremendous.

>> fine just learning ES6, a front-end technology like Angular (2) or React And in 2015 you would have been just fine learning Ember or Angular 2. And in 2014 you would have been just fine learning Angular 1 or Ember. And in 2013 you would have been just fine learning Backbone and Ember. And in 2012 you would have been just fine learning Knockout and Backbone...

And you'll still be just fine knowing those things now. There are lots of positions out there that want Backbone and Angular 1 and Ember.

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#79

Post by greg5green »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #66
FrancoDiaz wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was assuming that JavaScript would already be known to a certain degree. I would actually recommend React over Angular for a beginner, because (assuming Angular 2 here) they're going to have to learn Typescript too. That's a big undertaking. A beginner could also use plain old ES5 with a JSX transpiler right in web page with React. VueJs might be a better choice than both of those, but much more limited job opportu…

>> I was assuming that JavaScript would already be known to a certain degree. That's totally fair and then I would completely agree with your comment.

It's a fair assumption, but not always true, unfortunately.

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#80

Post by nikdaheratik »

tibbon wrote: post #11

This is pretty much why I don't do front-end. I'm fully capable of it, but I just don't like keeping up with this flavor-of-the-week. It just doesn't feel like programming to me, or at least not the programming I enjoy. Strangely, I see so many new developers rushing toward the front-end, which seems much more complicated in many ways than just building solid web API services, analyzing data, etc.

The toolset itself has the weirdest gaps. You can get to 80-90% of a website design really quickly with the standard angular+bootstrap or whatever. But when a client wants it to do "Feature X" that is in one of the gaps then you're stuck spending hours trying to either hammer the problem into one of the frameworks or roll your own solution. And it's very hard to explain how "Feature X" took nearly half the time of standard "Features A-W".
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