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How to Become a Great JavaScript Developer

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Re: How to Become a Great JavaScript Developer

#91

Post by techpeace »

smlacy wrote: post #90

No. Not this. Net even close to this. Let me illustrate: How to become great at Sports: - Read books about sports. - Watch other people play sports. - Read in-depth analysis of past sports games. How to become great at Playing Violin: - Read books about playing violin. - Real sheet music by the great masters. - Listen to many concerts. It's inherently obvious that the above approaches are totally and completely wrong…

Isn't reading books a good way to build fundamentals? I don't think reading a book necessarily precludes you from working on the exercises in that book, which would indeed be a great way to build your understanding of a language. This is the way I approach learning new languages - working through a tutorial, or, indeed, a book. Giving someone the advice, "Hey, just go write some JavaScript," probably isn't great if they don't know any JavaScript.

Re: How to Become a Great JavaScript Developer

#92

Post by dj_doh »

fridek wrote: post #8

The best thing that happened to me as a JavaScript developer was being exposed to other languages. Especially the not-so-fancy Java and C++, really opened my mind about structuring code and planning for a long-term project. Knowing JavaScript and JavaScript frameworks is surprisingly useless for the type of work JS devs usually handle. The documentation often consists of TodoMVC type of examples and approaches. Hardl…

I second this. Sometime back I did Python for a production work. That for the first time gave me a true sense of Object-based inheritance v/s class based inheritance. Prior to that I used take JS way as-is. But wholeheartedly, may be not so much.

Re: How to Become a Great JavaScript Developer

#93

Post by [deleted] »

smlacy wrote: post #90

No. Not this. Net even close to this. Let me illustrate: How to become great at Sports: - Read books about sports. - Watch other people play sports. - Read in-depth analysis of past sports games. How to become great at Playing Violin: - Read books about playing violin. - Real sheet music by the great masters. - Listen to many concerts. It's inherently obvious that the above approaches are totally and completely wrong…

[deleted]

Re: How to Become a Great JavaScript Developer

#94

Post by o_____________o »

smlacy wrote: post #90

No. Not this. Net even close to this. Let me illustrate: How to become great at Sports: - Read books about sports. - Watch other people play sports. - Read in-depth analysis of past sports games. How to become great at Playing Violin: - Read books about playing violin. - Real sheet music by the great masters. - Listen to many concerts. It's inherently obvious that the above approaches are totally and completely wrong…

Knowledge work is different.

How to become great at Chess: - Read books about chess. - Watch other people play chess. - Read in-depth analysis of past chess games.

How to become great at Math: - Read books about math. - Watch other people perform math. - Read in-depth analysis of math.

You also skipped a key assertion from the author: "Do exercises and try to explain common JavaScript concepts such as inheritance in your own words."

But you're right, nothing beats digging in and creating something.

Re: How to Become a Great JavaScript Developer

#95

Post by [deleted] »

smlacy wrote: post #90

No. Not this. Net even close to this. Let me illustrate: How to become great at Sports: - Read books about sports. - Watch other people play sports. - Read in-depth analysis of past sports games. How to become great at Playing Violin: - Read books about playing violin. - Real sheet music by the great masters. - Listen to many concerts. It's inherently obvious that the above approaches are totally and completely wrong…

[deleted]

Re: How to Become a Great JavaScript Developer

#96

Post by notNow »

fridek wrote: post #8

The best thing that happened to me as a JavaScript developer was being exposed to other languages. Especially the not-so-fancy Java and C++, really opened my mind about structuring code and planning for a long-term project. Knowing JavaScript and JavaScript frameworks is surprisingly useless for the type of work JS devs usually handle. The documentation often consists of TodoMVC type of examples and approaches. Hardl…

Why would a front-end system be more complex than its back-end counterpart?

It just doesn't make any sense.

Re: How to Become a Great JavaScript Developer

#98

Post by murbard2 »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #81
murbard2 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's irrelevant; advancing the language isn't an exercise in programming language design, it's an exercise in getting everyone to support the extension and in avoiding breaking legacy code. It has almost nothing to do with the maintainer's talent as programmers or PL experts. If you doubt this argument, consider the fact that the horrible scoping, the weak typing, the insane casting rules are still here to this day…

Well, a lot of the little issues are being slowly fixed (see let and scoping in ES6). This goes back to the point of the person you are responding to. This is a thought more than a full-fledged argument, but perhaps little issues with the language actually can and do make people better developers when they are aware of them. My friend started driving a scooter. Dallas isn't particularly conducive to that. My friend s…

Yes, "let" will finally fix the horrible scoping - 20 years after the creation of JavaScript. In the meantime you'll still be stuck using lovely constructs like === and !==

And yes, JS support for lambda expression is surprisingly nice, but that is basically the only nice surprise.

Re: How to Become a Great JavaScript Developer

#99

Post by gfodor »

smlacy wrote: post #90

No. Not this. Net even close to this. Let me illustrate: How to become great at Sports: - Read books about sports. - Watch other people play sports. - Read in-depth analysis of past sports games. How to become great at Playing Violin: - Read books about playing violin. - Real sheet music by the great masters. - Listen to many concerts. It's inherently obvious that the above approaches are totally and completely wrong…

A professional software engineer should be regularly reading to keep up with their craft. It's a balance, and one that I've generally noticed is tipped away from focused reading/learning because the modern Stack Overflow-driven world nudges people to "just do it." Telling people "you should read a lot of books" shouldn't be necessary, but nowadays it is.

Re: How to Become a Great JavaScript Developer

#100

Post by jtchang »

o_____________o wrote: post #94
smlacy wrote: post #90

No. Not this. Net even close to this. Let me illustrate: How to become great at Sports: - Read books about sports. - Watch other people play sports. - Read in-depth analysis of past sports games. How to become great at Playing Violin: - Read books about playing violin. - Real sheet music by the great masters. - Listen to many concerts. It's inherently obvious that the above approaches are totally and completely wrong…

Knowledge work is different. How to become great at Chess: - Read books about chess. - Watch other people play chess. - Read in-depth analysis of past chess games. How to become great at Math: - Read books about math. - Watch other people perform math. - Read in-depth analysis of math. You also skipped a key assertion from the author: "Do exercises and try to explain common JavaScript concepts such as inheritance in…

Not really. The practice in knowledge work is to read and watch. That is in itself the practicing.

You must work and do to become great at something.

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