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Programmers who only know javascript are, controversially, still programmers.
by lclarkmichalek 9y ago
Programmers who only know javascript are, controversially, still programmers.
- leshow 9y agoEven if you're a JS programmer, having no knowledge of pointers just shows you've never dug very deep into how your language works. Does JS pass by value? by reference? does it pass references by value? These are all things a JS programmer should know, and requires some knowledge of pointers.
- bsaul 9y agoDon't understand the downvote. Understanding javascript's closure (which is a core js feature even on the client) properly without understanding pointers seems like an impossible task to me.
- inimino 9y agoThe idea of reference is necessary, but pointers are an implementation detail. If you don't come from C, you can understand everything in JavaScript without knowing what pointers are. Many languages have references to mutable state without the peculiar details that make pointers what they are.
- EdiX 9y agoRegardless of whether they can be called programmers, we can not deny that they exist.
- akuji1993 9y agoI'm really tired of people bashing Javascript to death. It's here, it's being used, wether you like it or not. Stop whining about it, please.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoThe constructive question here is: is there any way to make JavaScript stop being used (especially for tasks not related to webpages)?
- self-diversity 9y agoNope. Especially since many of us don't have piles of irrational hatred for it.
- inimino 9y agoThat is not a constructive question.
- bpp 9y agoI'm a programmer who spends all day in Go working on backend systems, but came to it from Javascript, my first language. Pointers were one of the concepts that took me the longest to understand, even having dug into them previously in the context of V8's object implementation. So I for one am grateful for this article, and just passed it on to a recent bootcamp grad at my company. Hopefully it will accelerate his learning curve.
- penpapersw 9y agoThe first language I learned was QBasic, so when I started to learn C++, the concept of pointers was bizarre and took longer to learn than it should have, but after it finally clicked, it gave me a special love for pointers, the simplicity of C, and low-level programming in general.
- int_19h 9y agoWhile QBasic didn't have pointer types, it did have pointers in disguise (or rather, pointers without disguise, which are just memory addresses) - VARPTR, PEEK and POKE. As I recall, PEEK'ing and POKE'ing things was actually necessary to do many important tricks in QB, especially once you started playing with CALL INTERRUPT.