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Comment by CryoLogic | Hacker News Reader

This seems like very beginner level JavaScript. Defining Functions, Functions as Objects, Context? All JS fundamental concepts.

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Because of JavaScript's prototypical nature, there are some nuances of the language that many people that have been using JavaScript for a while might not have known.

Things like new on functions, context, how prototypes work, etc...

Now with ES6/7/Typescript coming along, you're going to have a new generation of JS programmers that won't even realize you can "new up" a function.

I think now it's all considered basic since JS ecosystem has grown a lot and people take it for granted, but probably back then these were all advanced materials you couldn't find easily.

No, they were still basic in 2008. (ES3 was published in 1999.) JavaScript hasn’t changed very much as a language; just the tools around, mostly.

Javascript hadn't changed much up until the last few years.

Now with ES6 (ES2015), ES2016, ES2017, etc... It's beginning to add a not-insignificant amount of features to the core language which at least to me has completely changed how I write it (for the better)

In 2008 javascript programmers were called "script kiddies" and the language was only starting to get wider adoption. Unless you were already an experienced web programmer back then this was advanced material for most web programmers who only used to use javascript for displaying alerts and cute dynamic features.

Speaking from my own experience, I didn't know about all these prototypes and important concepts for a long time and and did fine. I built tons of web apps without knowing these "advanced" features. It was only when I decided to learn the language seriously that I got acquainted with a lot of these features like the prototype concept, object constructors, etc.

If you can build pretty advanced production websites without knowing these features I would say these features are advanced. That said, it's a different story now because javascript is an important language. But my point is in 2008 it wasn't.

Also this guy created jQuery, if he says it's advanced, it probably was.

> In 2008 javascript programmers were called "script kiddies"

Yeah, by pretentious people who thought…

> most web programmers who only used to use javascript for displaying alerts and cute dynamic features.

… that. I wouldn’t call someone who only knows how to display an alert a “JavaScript programmer” or base what are considered advanced concepts off of them.

> Also this guy created jQuery, if he says it's advanced, it probably was.

jQuery is a pretty normal library that gained a lot of popularity. It’s not particularly advanced.

I found that very valuable, even years into JS. Not in this particular book, but, Javascript Allongé has a similar approach. It gave me a fresh perspective on the language and functional programming (in JS), as well as re-explain the basics (since you can't have the basics explained enough)

Could you point to more advanced concepts? As a newb, I'm eager to learn.

If you want to be a good programmer, pick another language, and start there. you will learn more good practices from starting with a modern, full-featured language like python, than trying to work in the the chaotic disaster zone that is javascript.

A good programmer can pick up javascript quickly. Other than syntactic and semantic warts, it is not a difficult language to learn.

I second this. It was so easy to write JavaScript after writing C# and others for awhile.

Now I write mostly JavaScript (<3 TypeScript) because it's so easy and fast, but having traditional OOP principals in my head is very helpful.

You'll also find many more, much better examples for data structures and algorithms in Java or C#.

Java and C# aren't going to give you the same flavour of protypical inheritance that JavaScript has.

Perhaps you might try Lisp or scheme:

http://www.crockford.com/javascript/little.html

No, not the same. The general concepts are similar, though.

My thinking goes: understanding classic OOP is helpful in learning JavaScript because the high level concepts are the same but in my opinion more obvious and easier to implement in Java/C#.

By more obvious, a Java/C# (+ others) program starts with a class and to add functionality you either have to add more methods to that class or implement another class. So to a new programmer "duh, everything is an object and objects are instances of a class".

It's kind of hard to convey the same idea to someone in JavaScript when {} is called an object, "xxx" is an object, and to compose a new class, you compose a new function.

However, to someone who already understands classes and objects, it's just a new/different way to create classes and objects.

Try not using prototype or class in JavaScript for a while, and you will do just fine without them. If there's a paradigm, or best practice, and you want to learn, don't follow it and see what happens.

I write procedural scripts all the time for just getting things done, often in JavaScript, Perl and PHP.

I've only worked on one application written without any OO patterns, completely procedural, and it was a complete mess.

Adding or extending features caused cascading bugs. Eventually we had to rewrite the backend (PHP) into MVC to be productive. I quit because I dreaded the work. I didn't want to write another line.

I have been pretty interested in functional programming lately, or the functional paradigm everyone in JS is following nowadays, but haven't gotten the chance to take a deep dive yet.

Neither Lisp nor Scheme offer prototypical inheritance out of the box. Lisp uses ol'-fashioned nominal subclassing, while Scheme doesn't even have "objects" in the OOP sense. They're powerful enough to add it, but nobody does because the prototypical object model pales in comparison to CLOS. Come to think of it, every object model that's not CLOS pales in comparison to CLOS...

I think this is a poor recommendation regardless, because programming in JS really is more similar to modern C# than it is to Lisp or Scheme.

Also, Douglas Crockford is an asshat. How did he wind up an authority on anything?

I have reasons to believe that using "traditional OOP principles" is a bad way to program in JS. If you look at TypeScript development history, they started from adding classes to JS, but now work on advanced stuff that has nothing to do with OOP.

Thanks for the suggestion.

I actually started with Python and moved on to JavaScript for my work involving web development. Currently, I use both.

I'm generally comfortable with making CRUD apps employing OOP, using both Python classes and prototypal inheritance in JS. My issue is that I still don't have the experience to understand WHY people often lament the 'chaotic disaster' that is JS. I haven't had any issues yet...

I also just want to keep the momentum up and never stop learning.

I don't really want to stoke a language war, but if it truly isn't immediately obvious to you why a language like Python is less of a mess than JS (which lacks fundamental things like "packages"), then you aren't done with Python yet.

I don't mean that to be rude. It's just...the bar is very low here.

JS has packages. http://exploringjs.com/es6/ch_modules.html

you mean, the future version of javascript that nobody uses yet has modules:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Web/JavaScript/Referen...

meanwhile, everyone else uses one of the sixteen competing implementations of something that was built-in to any real language starting in the 70s. that's not a mess at all.

Seems like a typical response by a non-JS programmer that doesn't really understand where JavaScript is at these days.

JavaScript just isn't the "chaotic disaster" many try to paint it as anymore. Sure, you can write it in a chaotic way, but the level of understanding and education has helped make it easier for people coming into JavaScript actually do well, and avoid the major stumbles that caused issues in the early days. Add in advances to the language itself over the lat few years, and it's a very solid language.

Do not do this. Do not listen to anyone calling JavaScript a "chaotic disaster zone", or engaging in any such 1990s style language-wars childishness.

I spent years programming C# before switching to JS, and it took me a long time to stop thinking in a object-oriented way and embrace the functional style that works best with JavaScript.

If you want to learn JS and be a good JS programmer, you are best learning JS, not some other language. That's basic common sense. A great place to start is with the "You Don't Know JS" book series, which are all available online, for free: https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS.

This is just wrong on so many levels. I wish "we" would get over this meme that by picking up language X that is a paradigm shift from language Y, that you're going to be a better programmer in language Y. That's just nonsense.

The comment about "chaotic disaster zone" is just bitterness for the typical reasons of hatred for JavaScript.

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