Kinda cool. While covering basic topics I don't know if this really the best guide for beginners. REPL is just not a term a beginner needs to know. Also while the console is awesome It's hard for a beginner to take the knowledge and apply it to something they can immediately do on their own.
also a good call. my god github is amazing. again good job.
Seems like there are still lots of references to REPL. Potentially remove them all? Why not just call it a console?
Oh hahah I forgot I had used it so much
This is a really nice, fun way to teach javascript. The internet is full of cats, so the possibilities are endless as far as the future articles are concerned. I've shared this with my friend who wanted to learn javascript (and also happens to be a total cat nut (just like me)).
Great. But teaching beginners not to use semicolons at the end of lines may not be the best of ideas, especially since they can then be caught out when they type two lines that JS sees as one.
if you find an instance in the code examples where ASI doesn't do its job i'd happily merge in a pull request that inserts a semicolon manually https://github.com/maxogden/javascript-for-cats
No no no. Teaching people to only use a semicolon in some cases is even worse. It's far better to just tell them to use semicolons everywhere, as they should. ASI is an error-correction mechanism, after all.
i'll make you a deal: if you can find a bug caused by me not using semicolons in any of my github repos from the last year i will add a section into jsforcats about using semicolons
Well, you're not a beginner, so it doesn't really apply to you. Consistency and completeness are very important to avoid confusion.
Yeah. I don't want begginers to be caught out.
teaching to a broad audience means balancing the likelihood that the learner will be in over their head (too much information) with the likelihood that they will have a negative experience stemming from lack of information (bug due to missing semicolon). given javascript and its many bad parts I believe the first scenario to be much more likely than the second, especially for an introductory text.
There is mention somewhere that he is going to talk on underscore.js too but its not mentioned in the future topic list?
Sorry, it's part of the looping section. I should have clarified
cool! Will wait for the next writeup.
Strange explanation of the word "variable" in here. It doesn't mean "many" - more like "changeable". It's the opposite of "constant".
"many" as in "many forms". i'll work on clarifying the language
I second this "changeable" synonym instead of "many". At that point, you could also add a quick reference to mathematics, because that's where 99% of all people already got some experience with variables.
Very cool tutorial by the way, keep up the great work!
This is nice, especially how it encourages using the in-browser development environment. I think it should more strongly direct people to use Chrome so it can be one set of instructions and go deeper.
The copy on this reads a lot like Chris Pine's introduction to Ruby. Playful, insightful, and simple enough that it isn't intimidating. Really nice.
I hadn't seen this specific introduction, thanks! I first learned ruby through _why's poignant guide which definitely influenced the approach I took here