I 100% indorse "read libraries". There really is a lot of wisdom buried in them. I read through MooTools back in the day and I would go as far as to call the experience formative. Read frameworks you don't like and consider WHY they work like they do.
How to Become a Great JavaScript Developer
11–20 of 171 posts
Re: How to Become a Great JavaScript Developer
#12Missing advice: learn to program well in a few well designed programming language. JavaScript was designed in 10 days and the main reason it still exists today is incredibly strong path dependence. There's nothing wrong with wanting to become a great JavaScript developer, but one needs to become a great developer first, and JavaScript just isn't conducive to that.
Re: How to Become a Great JavaScript Developer
#13tldr: ( my own, not the authors in the article itself ) - Read books - Learn libraries ( author seems to like node.js and recommends libraries associated with that ) - Do exercises - Learn how classes work in JS ( Note this is amusing to me since JS does not have classes in the typical sense [ they are implemented via libraries with prototypes and closures ] ) - Learn what Es5, Es6, ES7 are ( There are good things he…
- Learn how classes work in JS ( Note this is amusing to me since JS does not have classes and everything about the way they are done is just craziness compared to a real OO language ) ES6 brings classes: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe... - Learn what Es5, Es6, ES7 are ( good for confusing yourself and writing code that won't work cross-browser... ) Babel means you can write ES6 and ES7…
Are you kidding here? In ES6 classes provide nothing more additional than the closures already in use via a bit of extra utility code. Doubters should click the link here provided by Luke. It is filled with "To Be Determined" for all details of anything useful.
Do you know what classes actually do in a real OO language, or are you just a fanboy of JS?
Also, using shims or translators proves nothing. I can write in C++ and use translators to convert that to JS. What is the point here exactly?
Adding extra confusing junk onto a weak language does not make the language "better", especially when the standards you are recommending people to learn aren't even finalized.
Where is the Acid test for ES5, ES6, and ES7 features? Hell where is the Acid test for HTML5?
Oh that's right; all of this is just a pile of nonstandard junk that people are begging for and isn't really implemented.
Re: How to Become a Great JavaScript Developer
#14Books are a waste of time. Most of them are garbage to begin with, and most of them are practically obsolete by the time they are published. Few have any lasting staying power. Besides, nobody ordained the author to be an authority on the subject. He was just a guy who wrote a book. It's zero indication of the quality of the content. Just write code. Practice, practice, practice.
You say "Books are a waste of time" but all your explanation says is "Books can be bad". That's not the same thing.
Re: How to Become a Great JavaScript Developer
#15The 'great' developer has nothing to do with this description. It's not only about knowing/learning stuff,it's about coming up with smart stuff.
Re: How to Become a Great JavaScript Developer
#16I think he/she should have suggested that you actually work on some javascript projects that you are passionate about.
Also, it seems like a big jump to go from doing exercises to giving lectures.
Re: How to Become a Great JavaScript Developer
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
As minimalistic as your comment is, I think it points to the single most important truth about JS: It's practically impossible for human beings to write “good” JS code. The only hope you have is using a sane language with sane concepts that can be compiled down to the JavaScript of the week (ES6, ASM.js, the works...). I would argue that JS should be handled analogously to Assembler: Good for you if you understand it…
... I'll never, for the life of me, understand comparing a high-level scripting language to almost the lowest of low-level assembly languages, as if JS doesn't give you abstractions at all. If you can't write good code in JS, it's because you're a bad programmer.
As a veteran C++ developer, I actually quite enjoy Javascript. Once I understood that Prototypes are linked lists and that *this is a pointer that changes according to 2 simple rules, Javascript became quite easy.
I mean they even give you a GUI debugger. It's hard to get stuck for long, even though it's not not a Visual Studio.
Like you said, you have already all the abstractions you need with this language. You can do complex things and for me, if I have composition, I'm pretty much already good to go.
Re: How to Become a Great JavaScript Developer
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
As minimalistic as your comment is, I think it points to the single most important truth about JS: It's practically impossible for human beings to write “good” JS code. The only hope you have is using a sane language with sane concepts that can be compiled down to the JavaScript of the week (ES6, ASM.js, the works...). I would argue that JS should be handled analogously to Assembler: Good for you if you understand it…
... I'll never, for the life of me, understand comparing a high-level scripting language to almost the lowest of low-level assembly languages, as if JS doesn't give you abstractions at all. If you can't write good code in JS, it's because you're a bad programmer.
Just as much as you're a bad programmer if you can't write good assembler code. And I don't mean that ironically.
But academically being able to write in a certain language is still not the same thing as productivity combined with certain quality guarantees.
Re: How to Become a Great JavaScript Developer
#19This is all solid advice.
Is there a 'Genius' (nee 'Rap.Genius') type resource that annotates well known open source code?
Re: How to Become a Great JavaScript Developer
#20This is all solid advice. Is there a 'Genius' (nee 'Rap.Genius') type resource that annotates well known open source code?