Wow, this is great! I think it's the clearest, tersest explanation of JS langauge fundamentals that I've seen.
JavaScript. The Core: 2nd Edition
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Re: JavaScript. The Core: 2nd Edition
#22This is a very solid foundation to work with, for anyone who might have struggled with the contexts and how arrow functions, local variables, thises (hah) and prototypes fit into the bigger picture. It also clearly shows that Javascript is not the mess that it looks like from a beginner's perspective. Yes, anyone can create a 15-20 min video about how == and === can mess up stuff, how you cant just pass around a func…
Sure this car get dust on the ventilation, and you can mess up if you use the 3rd gear and you can't really use the blinkers without being careful and the seat warmers are wtf. But in the end of the day, stick to this car long enough and it works for you. Plus the most popular road of the world only accept this car so take it or leave.
I fail to get the flak that javascript faces ! Coming from java it was a breath of fresh air. This was the car that let me drive without a seatbelt when i wanted, let the doors be open if i wanted, stepping on the gas accelerated without fail and the brakes functioned fine, i could change the gearbox orientation, choose which side the steering wheel i wanted to be in general let me do what i wanted to without getting in my way. Sure it was not foolproof and i dont want it to be. I like JS just the way it is and I am grateful to it.
Re: JavaScript. The Core: 2nd Edition
#23I also highly recommend Kyle Simpson’s “You Don’t Know JS” series. Very very good.
https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS/blob/master/READM...
Re: JavaScript. The Core: 2nd Edition
#24This is a very solid foundation to work with, for anyone who might have struggled with the contexts and how arrow functions, local variables, thises (hah) and prototypes fit into the bigger picture. It also clearly shows that Javascript is not the mess that it looks like from a beginner's perspective. Yes, anyone can create a 15-20 min video about how == and === can mess up stuff, how you cant just pass around a func…
>It also clearly shows that Javascript is not the mess that it looks like from a beginner's perspective. Let's agree to disagree. I suspect your bar is too low. You could have made that argument for early versions of PHP (i.e. before 5)
Full disclosure: I've been writing JS for pretty much as long as I can remember and currently do it professionally, and I'm speaking mostly to my personal experience with having used both of them personally and professionally.
The question is how often you get bitten in the ass by it, specifically as a professional rather than a beginner, and in my experience it's been very little with Javascript but quite often with PHP. Once you know a few things like the difference between == and ===, that undefined and null are different, etc., it's pretty easy to avoid the warts because the warts become obvious. I'm not going to argue that Javascript is well designed, it's really not, just that I rarely if ever run into the typical laundry list of gripes in such a way that it has a profound effect on my job.
And having ESLint backing me up doesn't hurt, either. But that's not technically relevant.
PHP, especially the older versions, contained many subtle traps you could easily fall into. For all of its flaws, I've never really felt the same about Javascript. More to the point, beginners are always going to stumble. It comes with the territory. I tend to focus my criticisms more on problems that knowledgeable programmers can stumble into accidentally rather than ones that are commonly met by new programmers, if that makes sense. The former seems like a far worse problem, because the former starts to touch (bear with me) "real" code.
Just as an aside, the biggest single pain point for me when I still used PHP (a lifetime ago, now) was the way PHP used to report missing quotes extremely inaccurately. Egads that was an awful bug. I hope they fixed that.
What it boils down to in my mind is, when I'm writing JS, I'm comfortable not having a linter available. I don't always feel the same way with PHP, because I don't feel like the traps are as easily avoided. I certainly don't think I'm some sort of Javascript guru, it's just that I don't have many problems with it in a purely practical sense when compared to PHP.
Re: JavaScript. The Core: 2nd Edition
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure this car get dust on the ventilation, and you can mess up if you use the 3rd gear and you can't really use the blinkers without being careful and the seat warmers are wtf. But in the end of the day, stick to this car long enough and it works for you. Plus the most popular road of the world only accept this car so take it or leave.
I fail to get the flak that javascript faces ! Coming from java it was a breath of fresh air. This was the car that let me drive without a seatbelt when i wanted, let the doors be open if i wanted, stepping on the gas accelerated without fail and the brakes functioned fine, i could change the gearbox orientation, choose which side the steering wheel i wanted to be in general let me do what i wanted to without getting…
[deleted]
Re: JavaScript. The Core: 2nd Edition
#26This is a very solid foundation to work with, for anyone who might have struggled with the contexts and how arrow functions, local variables, thises (hah) and prototypes fit into the bigger picture. It also clearly shows that Javascript is not the mess that it looks like from a beginner's perspective. Yes, anyone can create a 15-20 min video about how == and === can mess up stuff, how you cant just pass around a func…
>It also clearly shows that Javascript is not the mess that it looks like from a beginner's perspective. Let's agree to disagree. I suspect your bar is too low. You could have made that argument for early versions of PHP (i.e. before 5)
It's hard for me to take these comments seriously unless you feel this way consistently across most other dynamically-typed languages -- at least it'd be consistent.
I've used most dynamically-typed langs at this point and I've run out of reasons to use something aside from modern Javascript if I would have originally used Clojure or Ruby in the past.
Though it feels sheepish to reward your low-effort comment with a response.
Re: JavaScript. The Core: 2nd Edition
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure this car get dust on the ventilation, and you can mess up if you use the 3rd gear and you can't really use the blinkers without being careful and the seat warmers are wtf. But in the end of the day, stick to this car long enough and it works for you. Plus the most popular road of the world only accept this car so take it or leave.
Not everybody can afford a Tesla or a BMW. For some of us, A Toyota Corolla or a Honda Accord is more than capable of getting the job done.
Hey, Toyota and Honda are good quality cars, did you mean chevrolet, ford or renault?
Re: JavaScript. The Core: 2nd Edition
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure this car get dust on the ventilation, and you can mess up if you use the 3rd gear and you can't really use the blinkers without being careful and the seat warmers are wtf. But in the end of the day, stick to this car long enough and it works for you. Plus the most popular road of the world only accept this car so take it or leave.
I fail to get the flak that javascript faces ! Coming from java it was a breath of fresh air. This was the car that let me drive without a seatbelt when i wanted, let the doors be open if i wanted, stepping on the gas accelerated without fail and the brakes functioned fine, i could change the gearbox orientation, choose which side the steering wheel i wanted to be in general let me do what i wanted to without getting…
>I fail to get the flak that javascript faces !
I personally don't like that Javascript has had to have a ton of work done on it to get it to the point of other languages that were better at their first release. It was just a ton of time spent on something that was weak to begin with.
If Javascript were better at the beginning, and this same effort was spent on it, it probably would be ruling the world, front and back-end, and be a really good language with great tooling around it.
There was a great amount of debate about nulls being a billion dollar mistake, but Javascript probably beats it in monetary damages by far.
Re: JavaScript. The Core: 2nd Edition
#29> "ECMAScript is an object-oriented programming language, having concept of an object as its core abstraction."
I'm curious as to whether or not this definition makes sense to other developers? ECMAScript does have a built-in "Object" data type, though I wouldn't say that this is it's "core abstraction". Further, firmly object-oriented languages, such as Java, seem to lack this abstraction. Perhaps I'm missing something in the definition?
Re: JavaScript. The Core: 2nd Edition
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
I fail to get the flak that javascript faces ! Coming from java it was a breath of fresh air. This was the car that let me drive without a seatbelt when i wanted, let the doors be open if i wanted, stepping on the gas accelerated without fail and the brakes functioned fine, i could change the gearbox orientation, choose which side the steering wheel i wanted to be in general let me do what i wanted to without getting…
>I fail to get the flak that javascript faces ! I personally don't like that Javascript has had to have a ton of work done on it to get it to the point of other languages that were better at their first release. It was just a ton of time spent on something that was weak to begin with. If Javascript were better at the beginning, and this same effort was spent on it, it probably would be ruling the world, front and bac…
Something wasn’t done right, right off the bat, thats grounds for not liking it, sure. But to dismiss it as immature despite it overcoming most (not all) of those flaws seems unfair.
I like it, some dont. I get it. All I ask is to not dismiss it.
Folks new to programming find these edge cases as a reason to not learn it. That irks me.