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I have a question, because this video confused me. I don't have background to follow through all the assertions Gary Bernhardt did, but I'll try to watch it aga

by atmosx 13y ago

I have a question, because this video confused me. I don't have background to follow through all the assertions Gary Bernhardt did, but I'll try to watch it again, since it was fun. I want to become a full stack developer. I can program and write tests in ruby, I can write applications using Sinatra and now I am learning rails. I bought a book to start learning JavaScript because it's the most popular language and basically will allow me to write modern applications. After I'm done with JS I'll probably jump into something else (rust, go, C, C++, Java, whatever helps do the staff I want). But watching this video, I'm confused: I avoided CoffeScript because I read in their documentation that in order to debug the code you have to actually know JavaScript so I figured that the best thing to do is learn JS and then use an abstraction (i.e. Coffescript) and tools like AngularJS and Node.js... Is my approach wrong? :-/

tragic 13y ago
You can get around it to some extend with source maps and so on - just make sure you're generating them with whatever build process you use. In practice, however, all that lovely Coffeescript syntax can easily trip you up; often something will compile successfully, but not to the 'right' Javascript. I wouldn't recommend CS until you get your head around the fundamentals of JS. In particular, CS does some very 'clever' things with the Javascript this object; I have certainly lost my scope at unexpected points in CS programs (often in loops). When you're optimising code, furthermore, you definitely need a strong sense of what JS code you'll get out the other end. I'd recommend Reginald Braithwaite's Javascript Allonge as an overview of JS semantics - the material on scopes and environments is very useful, given that JS behaviour on that score is ... idiosyncratic. https://leanpub.com/javascript-allonge/read https://leanpub.com/javascript-allonge/read

by atmosx 13y ago

tragic 13y ago

You can get around it to some extend with source maps and so on - just make sure you're generating them with whatever build process you use. In practice, however, all that lovely Coffeescript syntax can easily trip you up; often something will compile successfully, but not to the 'right' Javascript. I wouldn't recommend CS until you get your head around the fundamentals of JS. In particular, CS does some very 'clever' things with the Javascript this object; I have certainly lost my scope at unexpected points in CS programs (often in loops). When you're optimising code, furthermore, you definitely need a strong sense of what JS code you'll get out the other end. I'd recommend Reginald Braithwaite's Javascript Allonge as an overview of JS semantics - the material on scopes and environments is very useful, given that JS behaviour on that score is ... idiosyncratic. https://leanpub.com/javascript-allonge/read https://leanpub.com/javascript-allonge/read