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Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

The author thinks that CSS and Javascript are boring because he doesn't know enough to get to the flow level. I disagree. CSS and Javascript are boring because they involve a lot of task-switching and trial and error. Stuff like, "Oh, this should be not be floating to the left" and "uh oh, the code dies in IE with no error message".

I don't think ignorance is the reason people have trouble writing Javascript. I think it's because writing Javascript for the web sucks. (I like node.js 1000x more than Javascript for the web. But it's the same programming language.)

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It doesn't help that there isn't some 'central' place as a resource for Javascript (e.g. php-docs for php, python-docs for python, ruby-docs for ruby, etc). Where are the Javascript docs?

Mozilla developer center? https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript/Guide

They even changed their design. I'm surprised nobody talked about it.

That is more like an introductory tutorial. The docs are here - https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript/Reference

The frequency at which MDN docs are linked in StackOverflow JavaScript answers shows that people are getting more familiar with them. PromoteJS took off recently and it has helped too.

The trouble with Mozilla's docs is that they are really bad about distinguishing between cross-browser compatible JavaScript and Mozilla's own implementation. For example, the reference you linked there includes the let-statement. The only disclaimer in Mozilla's docs is that it's part of "JavaScript 1.7," which would lead you to believe it's part of a recent language standard that modern browsers are likely to support. In fact, "JavaScript 1.X" where X > 5 is code for "Firefox-only."

I know about the MDN docs, but:

- No offline version of the documentation.

- No distinction between Firefox-only features. (as others have mentioned)

- No mention of Chrome/Safari/IE-only features.

Are the MDN docs really seen as the 'canonical' reference to JavaScript or are they just the most accessible reference?

The MDN is of course specific to Mozilla.

If you are interested in the official standards, please have a look at my other comment where I summarized them:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2045151

Also if you are looking for quirks documentation

http://www.quirksmode.org/compatibility.html

> there isn't some 'central' place as a resource for Javascript

That isn't true. All important parts of what we call "Java Script" are well-defined at central, publicly accessible places.

However, one needs to know that the standardized part of Java Script is called ECMAScript, whose current version (5th edition) is available at:

http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecm...

One also needs to know that the DOM API is not specified by ECMA but by the W3C:

http://www.w3.org/DOM/DOMTR

The DOM standard consists of 3 parts, all of which provide an appendix for ECMAScript:

http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-DOM-Level-1-19981001/ecma-scri...

http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Core-20001113/ecma...

http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-DOM-Level-3-Core-20040407/ecma...

One might ask why all those JavaScript tutorials don't link to the standard, and why so many of them don't even mention the correct technical term "ECMAScript". No offense intended, but I guess they simply don't know any better. Although they ought to know.

For those who don't like to read technical standards, there are also nice secondary resources like the Mozilla Developer Network:

https://developer.mozilla.org/

Don't you find it exciting that you can sculpt something visual that ANYONE can see, just by typing code? After a long time, it still gives me a bit of that 'wow' feeling.

It's the browser idiosyncrasies which suck...

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