Learning JavaScript and Web Programming

Hearken to the days of view-source:. Way back to Dynamic Duo and Brainjar. And DHTMLKitchen!

Presentation Proposal

History of free online education for web programming that led the web where it is today. I'll do some history chat and then show some really interesting things with JavaScript.

Luddite!

There's a lot of laughing over CENTER and TABLE, etc. The truth is, us old hardcore DHTML guys were the ones pushing away from that, advocating standards-based code that became more common around 2004.

Yes JavaScript is a Real Programming Language!

Few people took JavaScript seriously back then. We had very little credibility among programmers. Today, people still laugh off "DHTML". But it was us luddites who pushed for change.

And I did a little free QA for Mozilla, too.

For some of what I learned, I offer a background of how I got to what I know now.

Dan Steinman's Dynamic Duo featured a DynLayer wrapper or "Decorator" that could be extended using prototypal inheritance. The DynLayer API worked in Netscape 4 and IE5. Dan explained all about how it worked and the source code was pretty easy to read.

Mike Hall's Brainjar had some really great articles, too. His articles on Events and CSS were incredibly thorough and explained the intricacies and edge cases of these specifications and their implementations.

Soon, I would set off to build my own site much like these sites. I picked DHTMLKitchen.com.

DHTML Central forums came along and soon after that, 13th parallel. These were great sites that lead to many successful programming careers, including those of Tim Scarfe, Aaron Boodman, Daniel Pupius, Alex Russell, Michael van Ouwerkerk, Tom Trenka and many others. This was a stomping ground for us.

We helped each other out with testing and code checks. I got some help building this blast-from-the past: Dress Room! a Drag'n'Drop game for girls. That was live, until two months ago, when she deleted it in anger.

Netscape 4

Back in those days, to support Netscape 4 meant using document.layers, which meant using a layer crawler for image swaps:

Breadth-First Search Layer Crawler for Netscape 4

function findImage(name, doc) {
  var i, img; 
  for (i = 0; i < doc.images.length; i++)
    if (doc.images[i].name == name)
      return doc.images[i];
  for (i = 0; i < doc.layers.length; i++)
    if ((img = findImage(name, doc.layers[i].document)) != null) {
      img.container = doc.layers[i];
      return img;
    }
  return null;
}

We hated it, of course! Around this time A List Apart was getting bigger and promoting anti-Netscape4 pages or warnings. I had one on my site, as did Brainjar.

Such code was to become a thing of the past. Instead, we focused on standards there. I learned a lot about the DOM from Brainjar and from reading specs.

Ajax

In 2004, Jessie James Garrett wrote the article on Ajax. It was massively popular, and discussed the ideas being used by Gmail, which at that time was horrible and simultaneously new and cool. The pendulum was in full swing to front end development with Ajax. DHTML was an old buzzword, and "Rich Internet Application" was a sort of dud buzzword, being both long and plain-sounding.

Internet Rock Star

Then came the trend to glamorize people and eschew critical discussion and knowledge sharing. The "Internet Rockstar" was born and soon took on the name "Tech Evangelist".

Marketing

Things would eventually shift in heavily the direction of marketing. For example, with Google promoting Google tech events featuring Glass, Go, and Dart. Their community managers promote the tech evangelists, to draw attendees, create a buzz (all of that caught on camera), and host private afterparties.

Books

Years later, I had some success in making some very detailed articles about JavaScript. I read books on object oriented programming, including:

Agile Software Development: Principles, Patterns, Practices, Robert Cecil Martin
Effective Java, Josh Bloch
UML Distilled, Martin Fowler
Refactoring, Martin Fowler
Domain Driven Design, Eric Evans
Head First Design Patterns, Elisabeth Freeman, Eric Freeman, Bert Bates, Kathy Sierra, Elisabeth Robson

I eventually found comp.lang.javascript, where I learned a lot more about ECMAScript from Richard Cornford (closures), Lasse Reichstein Nielsen, Eric Bednarz, and Thomas Lahn. My knowledge of the DOM and browser scripting deepened greatly during this time.

RTFM!

My wife printed out a copy of the ECMAScript specification, which I kept bedside and read for months. I still have this copy.

Evolution

My interests now have returned towards fitness, health, athletics, and music.

Slavery

Since I have not had success in teaching music, and in light of recent events, I have to return to programming. We're all slaves, so get used to it!

Conclusion

But for what I've learned, I offer a background of how I got to what I know now. It was a long journey and I have a lot to offer.

jennschiffer / dhtmlconf