[kwlug-disc] Learning Javascript

[Doug Moen]

I only dabble in this stuff, but I have some opinions based on hobby-level programming and blog posts. People who write javascript for a living may have better opinions.

Elm is a lovely language. It's a strongly-typed, pure functional programming using the "Elm Architecture" as the framework, and that requires a specific kind of thinking. It's a kind of thinking that I find very easy to deal with as a programmer. Elm has nice error messages and provides a guarantee that clients will never see run-time errors in their web browsers when running your code. Elm compiles into Javascript.

Javascript is object oriented (forcing you to mentally track shared mutable state) and dynamically typed, the opposite of Elm. A lot of industrial shops are switching to Typescript in order to get better compile time checking. Typescript compiles into Javascript and is largely compatible with it.

A lot of Javascript now revolves around "async/await", and there are a lot of blog posts currently being written about what a nightmare this is. (Even though it is supposedly an improvement over earlier frameworks.) Many of the blog posts refer back to this famous post: https://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2015/02/01/what-color-is-your-function/
I have now classified "async/await" as something to be avoided for my hobby programming. And I have no corporate masters who require me to learn and use it. I understand that async/await is currently essential for industrial programming at a scale where you are dealing with millions of network connections.

The React framework seems to predate async/await. It is essentially a third way of thinking about how to program, and about what triggers functions to be called. It seems to be an improvement over the previous paradigm of "callback hell". My impression is that the "Elm Architecture" is nicer to work with than React.

I understand that you can combine React with async/await.

I think there are multiple ways of thinking about programming in Javascript depending on which framework and language features you use. I also think that a solo programmer building a low-traffic web site has different requirements for their language and framework than an industrial programmer working in a large team at Facebook.

On Sat, Mar 13, 2021, at 1:12 PM, Paul Nijjar via kwlug-disc wrote:
> I do not understand JavaScript and it is holding me back.
> 
> I have basic familiarity with programming in other paradigms (Python,
> Powershell, Java, C, even Scheme) so I understand basic syntax like
> variables and if statements. I do not understand how JavaScript wants
> me to think, and I am looking for some resources to work through so I
> can learn. Questions I have:
> 
> - How does JavaScript want me to think?
> - What triggers particular functions to be run? I do not really
>   understand the control flow.
> - Do the popular frameworks (React, VUE, Angular) mean you have to
>   change the way you think from vanilla JavaScript?
> - Say I want to learn Elm. Does this hurt me or help me when trying to
>   learn JavaScript?
> 
> Some overview articles would be good to start, followed by some
> hands-on tutorials that illustrate language features step by step. I
> do not think I want to commit to some six month course right now, but
> if you know of good ones then pass them along. 
> 
> I realize that this is not completely on topic for this forum (and
> maybe I will try KWTechs later) but I thought this is a place to
> start.
> 
> - Paul
> 
> -- 
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> Blog: http://pnijjar.freeshell.org
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