4 ms·

Going the Other Way

26 points by quickthrower2 6y ago

MaxBarraclough 6y ago
> In the software world, when you go the other way you notice how all the blog posts, online help is not really helpful at all. They assume you'd only ever go A -> B. I was already a competent programmer when I learnt JavaScript. There's very little out there for someone in this position.
- gorpovitch 6y ago
  So true. Which ones did you end up using and enjoying the most ?
  - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
    I'm afraid I don't really have a good answer, I don't think I ever encountered a decent JavaScript for programmers tutorial. The Mozilla documentation on JavaScript, and (slightly less so) the w3schools.com documentation, are pretty good for reference, but they aren't tutorials. They're not up to the standard of, say, the .Net documentation, but they're still pretty good.
  - ivanche 6y ago
    Perhaps one of these 3 will be of help to you: https://eloquentjavascript.net/ https://eloquentjavascript.net/ https://leanpub.com/javascriptallongesix https://leanpub.com/javascriptallongesix https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS
    - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
      The first one clearly isn't intended for already competent programmers. The focus of the second one doesn't seem to be on teaching the JavaScript language. [0] The third one looks like the best bet, but it's still not explicitly aimed at an audience of already competent programmers. [1] [0] https://leanpub.com/javascriptallongesix/read#leanpub-auto-about-javascript-allong https://leanpub.com/javascriptallongesix/read#leanpub-auto-a... [1] https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS/blob/2nd-ed/get-started/ch2.md https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS/blob/2nd-ed/get-s...
  - wcarss 6y ago
    axel rauschmayer's books are pretty good: https://exploringjs.com/ https://exploringjs.com/ (edit: a more direct link: https://exploringjs.com/impatient-js/toc.html https://exploringjs.com/impatient-js/toc.html) I remember learning the fairly deep == type-inference algorithm by reading something he wrote, but I don't recall which thing it was in. A lot of the material is suitable as reference, so I haven't sat down and read much like a novel.
- AlchemistCamp 6y ago
  There probably aren't many books or courses for an experienced programmer learning Java, either. Python might be tough, too.
- jedimastert 6y ago
  I decided to learn guitar after playing piano for 10+ years. There's nothing for people who already know notes and a reasonable amount of theory.
phnofive 6y ago
I would imagine at least some of the price increase was DTO...
iends 6y ago
Heroku is great but I find it too expensive for hobby projects. I recently converted a small hobby project on a $5/mo VPS to lambda and api gateway and it now costs about $1/mo unless it gets more traffic. Yes, I can afford to pay a lot more, but I don’t want to and I’m willing to invest more time into something to save money if the process is repeatable. Lately this has been writing cloud formation that can easily be copied between projects. I wish it was easier though.
- murphm8 6y ago
  I find CDK[1] way easier to deal with than CloudFormation yaml or json. Try it out! [1] https://aws.amazon.com/cdk/ https://aws.amazon.com/cdk/
jtwaleson 6y ago
Heroku is so great. We recently had to move away from it due to very high HIPAA compliance pricing, but the AWS setup with Beanstalk is much more cumbersome. Heroku (and its open source cousin Cloud Foundry) just have the right abstraction level and very easy to use tooling.
- kevsim 6y ago
  Not sure if it's still an issue, but we used to have a nightmarish time with Beanstalk where deployments would hang and we'd have no choice but to deploy a second instance of our app, flip DNS over, etc. I seem to recall it was some CloudFormation thing under the hood. Never had that kinda pain in my brief time with Heroku.
lawwantsin17 6y ago
AWS to Heroku is like going from Sugar to Chocolate cake. It's still made with Sugar. Try Apache. The config is XML. How much simpler can people make it?
boxed 6y ago
The 10m rows limit and dynos shutting down was the reason I switched out from heroku to linode+dokku. Dokku is super close to being as simple as heroku but self hosted open source.

26 points by quickthrower2 6y ago

> In the software world, when you go the other way you notice how all the blog posts, online help is not really helpful at all. They assume you'd only ever go A -> B. I was already a competent programmer when I learnt JavaScript. There's very little out there for someone in this position.

gorpovitch 6y ago
So true. Which ones did you end up using and enjoying the most ?
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  I'm afraid I don't really have a good answer, I don't think I ever encountered a decent JavaScript for programmers tutorial. The Mozilla documentation on JavaScript, and (slightly less so) the w3schools.com documentation, are pretty good for reference, but they aren't tutorials. They're not up to the standard of, say, the .Net documentation, but they're still pretty good.
- ivanche 6y ago
  Perhaps one of these 3 will be of help to you: https://eloquentjavascript.net/ https://eloquentjavascript.net/ https://leanpub.com/javascriptallongesix https://leanpub.com/javascriptallongesix https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS
  - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
    The first one clearly isn't intended for already competent programmers. The focus of the second one doesn't seem to be on teaching the JavaScript language. [0] The third one looks like the best bet, but it's still not explicitly aimed at an audience of already competent programmers. [1] [0] https://leanpub.com/javascriptallongesix/read#leanpub-auto-about-javascript-allong https://leanpub.com/javascriptallongesix/read#leanpub-auto-a... [1] https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS/blob/2nd-ed/get-started/ch2.md https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS/blob/2nd-ed/get-s...
- wcarss 6y ago
  axel rauschmayer's books are pretty good: https://exploringjs.com/ https://exploringjs.com/ (edit: a more direct link: https://exploringjs.com/impatient-js/toc.html https://exploringjs.com/impatient-js/toc.html) I remember learning the fairly deep == type-inference algorithm by reading something he wrote, but I don't recall which thing it was in. A lot of the material is suitable as reference, so I haven't sat down and read much like a novel.
AlchemistCamp 6y ago
There probably aren't many books or courses for an experienced programmer learning Java, either. Python might be tough, too.
jedimastert 6y ago
I decided to learn guitar after playing piano for 10+ years. There's nothing for people who already know notes and a reasonable amount of theory.

phnofive 6y ago

I would imagine at least some of the price increase was DTO...

iends 6y ago

Heroku is great but I find it too expensive for hobby projects. I recently converted a small hobby project on a $5/mo VPS to lambda and api gateway and it now costs about $1/mo unless it gets more traffic. Yes, I can afford to pay a lot more, but I don’t want to and I’m willing to invest more time into something to save money if the process is repeatable. Lately this has been writing cloud formation that can easily be copied between projects. I wish it was easier though.

murphm8 6y ago
I find CDK[1] way easier to deal with than CloudFormation yaml or json. Try it out! [1] https://aws.amazon.com/cdk/ https://aws.amazon.com/cdk/

jtwaleson 6y ago

Heroku is so great. We recently had to move away from it due to very high HIPAA compliance pricing, but the AWS setup with Beanstalk is much more cumbersome. Heroku (and its open source cousin Cloud Foundry) just have the right abstraction level and very easy to use tooling.

kevsim 6y ago
Not sure if it's still an issue, but we used to have a nightmarish time with Beanstalk where deployments would hang and we'd have no choice but to deploy a second instance of our app, flip DNS over, etc. I seem to recall it was some CloudFormation thing under the hood. Never had that kinda pain in my brief time with Heroku.

lawwantsin17 6y ago

AWS to Heroku is like going from Sugar to Chocolate cake. It's still made with Sugar. Try Apache. The config is XML. How much simpler can people make it?

boxed 6y ago

The 10m rows limit and dynos shutting down was the reason I switched out from heroku to linode+dokku. Dokku is super close to being as simple as heroku but self hosted open source.