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Ask HN: Experienced JavaScript programmers, what are your recommendations?

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Re: Ask HN: Experienced JavaScript programmers, what are your recommendations?

#2
Recommendations...for what purpose? Please be more specific. Where are you now? What do you want to achieve? Do you want to build something from scratch or just polish your skills? Etc.

For example, I can tell you that Phaser is a very good library for game development (or similiarly, others that X is for Y), but that is pretty much useless if you are completely disinterested in that given area.

Re: Ask HN: Experienced JavaScript programmers, what are your recommendations?

#3

Recommendations...for what purpose? Please be more specific. Where are you now? What do you want to achieve? Do you want to build something from scratch or just polish your skills? Etc. For example, I can tell you that Phaser is a very good library for game development (or similiarly, others that X is for Y), but that is pretty much useless if you are completely disinterested in that given area.

Looking for recommendations across the board. It doesn't have to be specific. Knowing that Phaser is a very good library for game development is in itself good information.

I might or might not be interested in game development now, but I am interested in seeing recommendations of good resources from experienced programmers.

Re: Ask HN: Experienced JavaScript programmers, what are your recommendations?

#7
post #6

Reactjs with create-react-app Once you've built a couple of reasonably sized applications, then learn Redux.

create-react-app (with redux) is what really made me leve up in JavaScript. It forces you to think in a modern way, about JS. And it's really Easy to get started.

Re: Ask HN: Experienced JavaScript programmers, what are your recommendations?

#8
Not a very experienced js programmer myself, but I have heard this again and again from professionals : master ES6 first. Choose React, Vue or Angular next. Use solutions like Redux next for managing complex scenarios. Keep learning always but don't get overwhelmed by sheer amount of options available to JS developers nowadays... You don't need to learn most of those if your fundamentals are clear.

Re: Ask HN: Experienced JavaScript programmers, what are your recommendations?

#9
I highly recommend to deeply understand JavaScript itself first. I personally recommend books from Dr. Axel Rauschmayer -- http://exploringjs.com After reading it you will have a strong foundation in prototypes, clojures, high-order functions, and other fundamental concepts.

Also, I can recommend spending some time playing with native DOM interface -- so you will understand what is event loop, how listeners are attached/detached, what is event delegation, how to traverse DOM (and what does it cost), and all that jazz.

Nowadays parts of functional programming are on the rise, so you might want to familiarize yourself with it a little bit -- https://github.com/MostlyAdequate/mostly-adequate-guide this is a good book, and fist 5-7 chapters are good enough to change your look at the programming.

This is a foundation, and without it it will be hard to write decent code in a fast and reliable manner. After that you can pick any library (whatever is needed for the jobs around you) or any framework, and try to solve your problem in it. There is not that much a benefit from just learning libraries, frameworks and tools per se, so I recommend to move gradually, and you will understand during your path what do you need better.

Re: Ask HN: Experienced JavaScript programmers, what are your recommendations?

#10
Just don't do it. I totally regret I went for Javascript.

I started with systems programming with C++ etc.. At some point some 5 years ago I made the unfortunate decision to go for Javascript. After 5 years I can now confidently say that programming in Javascript is not about what you are creating, it is about what ESxxx version you use, what framework you use, whether you're using Promises or whatever idea people come up with tomorrow, and all this in an ever accellerating and continuing hype. I am sick of it already. Almost everything I learn is already, or will be soon, deprecated.

I would recommend people to go for C++/Qt or any language/framework where what you learn will not be wasted soon so you can use your valuable time to create things rather than learn the next framework or language idea all the time.

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