Comments on: Should I learn Javascript ?

By: Cymen

Cymen — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 17:44:34 +0000

JavaScript and the worry of multiple implementations/browsers/platforms is daunting at first but start out with something like an XMLHttpRequest in plain JavaScript then try doing it with Prototype and jQuery. Part of the benefits of these libraries is that they work around the implementation details. So while certainly there is a lot to learn, in practice one can accomplish quite a bit knowing a bit about when events are triggered, a bit about how to use the libraries, and a bit about DOM.

In terms of practicing JavaScript, writing GreaseMonkey scripts that are pure JS is a good way to learn and see how to tweak DOM. Internally at work, I’ve used this approach to change how a few things work in order to get acceptance of how I think things should work. Once the change is approved, I can simply put the JavaScript onto the pages themselves as it is pure (and relatively simple) JS.

By: abel

abel — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 02:37:08 +0000

Hi Eli…

The release of Google chrome may signal browser wars, but it seems to me, it is all about the JS VM wars. Chrome with V8 and firefox coming up with a new implementation of their js engine.

It looks like the future is high performance JS especially in DOM and other serialized data manipulation on the client side.

if you do start look forward to some decent posts

By: Lateef Jackson

Lateef Jackson — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 20:32:06 +0000

I wrote a blog post a while back about this:
(http://blog.hackingthought.com/2008/08/javascript-is-lingua-franca.html) and it sound like you are not doing much web programming. If you do need to jump into web space then I think it is almost a required language. With all the integrated libraries Javascript can be the only language you need to know for web programming skipping all the backend frameworks and just using some AJAX Storage API.

By: eliben

eliben — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 16:33:07 +0000

Thanks for all the interesting suggestions. Right now I’ve backed off the idea because I don’t have things to tweak in the blog. But I’m sure I’ll come back thinking about this quite soon, and I will take these things into consideration.

By: Alex Martelli

Alex Martelli — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 05:40:57 +0000

I think learning Javascript is a good idea — I recommend O’Reilly’s “Javascript: the good parts”, a _very thin_ book (no, really!) to identify the parts of the language that should be avoided like the plague (but *DON’T* go modifying builtins as that book’s author does…!!!).

I agree with Ted Henry about the quality of Prototype and jQuery, which is why I strongly recommend Dojo, a *very Pythonic* framework that has pretty high quality throughout — even at the most basic level, you get functions resembling Python’s map and filter, ones that work like functools.partial or like method bindings in Python, Deferred for async work (like in Twisted), a good module system — on top on that, there are good abstractions over Ajax, Gears, &c, and a widget-based GUI framework which looks decent (but I haven’t done much with the latter). Again, ORA’s “Definitive Guide” book on Dojo is quite good.

For debugging, you’ll want Firefox, with Firebug and Yslow add-ons, and no doubt arrangements as close to that as you can get for any other browser you care about (if any;-).

Alex

By: Ted Henry

Ted Henry — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 20:13:30 +0000

After your in-depth study of SICP, you may find JavaScript lacking some horsepower as JavaScript is close enough to Scheme that you can almost taste it but you can’t have it. JavaScript is good but it isn’t Scheme.

Learning the browsers is way more time consuming than learning the language. Feature detection and progressive enhancements is the most interesting and difficult topic of building browser apps. It is black art which means a lot of hunting for obscure bits of info and techniques.

In general, the code in libraries like Prototype.js and jQuery is not high quality. They are medium to low quality and only suitable for use in a few of the most modern browsers under certain circumstances. Reading libraries like this is a good way to start but almost surely you will want to write your own libraries. This is very time consuming.

I struggle to resist the temptation to implement my own programming language daily. If you can live with your blog the way it is, you’ll have a lot more spare time

By: Valentin Jacquemin

Valentin Jacquemin — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 18:14:23 +0000

“Recently I realized that some of the applications I’m writing at home would be most usable as web applications. But for that, one has to construct a usable front-end in the browser, and for this knowledge of JS is required.”

I don’t agree with this. It’s clearly possible to create beautiful webapps without any knowledge of JS. For example, the flex framework let you build professional webapps without any JS code (e.g. https://buzzword.acrobat.com/#o).

By: x5315

x5315 — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 12:35:48 +0000

Javascript is good.

You just have to learn how to use it properly. Don’t follow tutorials or code snippets off the net. Chances are that 95% of them are poor quality.

By: fantasybei

fantasybei — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 08:48:02 +0000

it seems your job have little relationship with web app? so, maybe you can learn it when you need it, just a dynamic language, uah?