Nature of JavaScript reading

[Carmer]

Read through Chapter 3 (Speaking): The Nature of JavaScript

Discuss in the comments

Some questions to start discussion:

What was interesting? Which sections did you totally skim? Do you think the reading was valuable? Which topics were notably confusing?

[susiirwin]

Interesting: pretty cool that JavaScript is both object oriented and functional.

This reading was totally helpful - it was nice to have JavaScript laid out in an outline format and broken down into small, manageable parts. I had heard from Lauren that JavaScript fails silently and that still makes me chuckle and terrifies me at the same time! haha. One of the beautiful parts of Ruby and Rails is the stream of error messages they provide. From reading this article, JavaScript sounds super powerful, but maybe not as structured and robust as Ruby?(Solely basing this on this particular article). At times it almost sounds like a buggy language- it will be interesting to get a deep dive and start investigating this a bit more. I didn't skim any of this - it was super short. This chapter wasn't super confusing. Will wait and see what the next reading does to my brain.

[JeanJoeris]

I think the most interesting part to me are the explanations of javascript's quirkiness, particularly the weirdness around data-type casting. I had always attributed this to the fact core functionality was built in 10 days, but it is helpful to know this was less of a bug when it would fail silently. I really appreciated seeing javascript's influences. I find it frustrating that javascript has only 2 scopes.

On the whole, this article helped me understand the strange nature of javascript but not be a bigger fan of this nature

[jesse-spevack]

What was interesting?

• JavaScript is both functional and object-oriented
• It's part of the web platform, but the "former can also be used without the latter"
• JavaScript has no block-scoped variables.

  Which sections did you totally skim?

• Influences. I'm not so familiar with the listed languages, so the comparison isn't very meaningful.

  Do you think the reading was valuable?

• I think this is a good high level read about JavaScript.

  Which topics were notably confusing?

• The notion that arrays are too flexible. I think I need to see an example.

[bheim6]

• What was interesting?
  • JavaScript is both object oriented and functional
  • JS itself doesn't actually contain integers, only floating point numbers
  • Array indexing is not done like it is in Ruby, numbers are mapped to elements rather than typical indexing
• Which sections did you totally skim?
  • None since it was a short chapter
• Do you think the reading was valuable?
  • Yes, it was a nice overview of the basic properties of JS, as well as introduced some of the quirky behavior that we can expect to encounter
• Which topics were notably confusing?
  • I am interested to learn more about literals and how to introduce abstractions to objects

[danbroadbent]

What was interesting? That JS is functional and object oriented. I had read that originally JS was not object oriented, so I’m glad that there is support for things like classes now.

It fails silently. Very good to know before jumping into a new language.

Which sections did you totally skim? Influences, mainly because I don’t know much about the influencing languages.

Do you think the reading was valuable? Yes, I think that it is good to get as much exposure to these new concepts and terms that we didn’t hear much about when doing Ruby.

Which topics were notably confusing? Mainly things that don’t know about yet like closures and prototypes.

[NateAnderson1780]

What was interesting? JavaScript is both functional and object oriented. I did not realize that it had so many quirks at first, such as no integers, only floating point numbers.

Which sections did you totally skim? The reading was very short so I read the entire thing but the influences was probably the section I spent the least time on.

Do you think the reading was valuable? Yes, other people may have had a little more exposure to Javascript previously but I personally have not so it was nice to have the initial reading be somewhat of an overview.

Which topics were notably confusing? Mostly I just wish I knew more about the influences to be able to note the similarities.

[j-sm-n]

What was interesting? I really found learning about the different languages that have influenced JavaScript to be interesting. And I had no idea that arrays in JS didn't behave the same way as they do in Ruby.

Which sections did you totally skim? The chapter was short, so I didn't end up skimming anything.

Do you think the reading was valuable? The chapter was a decent overview of what JS is as a programming language, essentially. I think it's good for anyone who at least knows one other language that's similar to JS but is a complete beginner to JS itself.

Which topics were notably confusing Object literals and array literals in terms of how they allow you to add abstractions. I'd like to see examples of this.

[rdavid1099]

What was interesting? I'm surprised that language fails silently. Even working through some of the earlier NodeSchool work, I would get frustrated that there wasn't a compiler yelling at me... The program just wouldn't work. This is new to me because as I dabbled with C#, I got very used to a compiler constantly helping you unless everything was written PERFECTLY.

Which sections did you totally skim? There were only a few sentences... So I read the whole chapter. 💯

Do you think the reading was valuable? I think the reading was very valuable. It was a great introduction to what JavaScript is on a high-level. The language basically clicked as soon as I made the OOP connection and realized it's basically like Ruby or any other OO language.

Which topics were notably confusing The elegant parts section seemed a little advanced. Basically, I'm bad a grasping concepts until I personally struggle to implement them and figure them out in the wild. That section was definitely complicated for me.

[ghost]

What was interesting?
It was interesting to learn that JavaScript does not have integers, only floats. This makes sense when I think about it, because all you really need are floats, but integers can be convenient at times. It's also interesting that JavaScript is deployed as source code and compiled by engines. Coming from Ruby and Rails, this is a fairly novel concept.

What sections did you totally skim?
None.

Do you think the reading was valuable?
The reading was valuable because it gave me a very broad overview of some interesting aspects of JavaScript. It definitely piqued my curiosity regarding some of the more nuanced and complex aspects of the language.

Which topics were notably confusing?
The very brief discussion of arrays was confusing. I don't know what "they are not indexed sequences of elements, but maps from numbers to elements" means. Although I may not know what any of the terms in the "Elegant Parts" section refer to, I'm excited to learn about them.

[rsbarbo]

What was interesting?

I have learned that JS is dynamic, meaning it allows me to change properties of objects after they have been created. Its variables and object properties can hold values of any type. it is functional and object-oriented (owowww mind-blown) Javascript is so badass that support the best of both worlds, functional programming with first-class functions, closures, etc.. and object-oriented programming with our lovely mutable states, objects, etc…

Which sections did you totally skim? I would say that the "influences" was the portion that I skimmed the most, just cause it contains technicalities that I am not familiar with, and although I have tried looking it up, I feel that it is a much deeper technical subject that a few minutes read would not explain.

Do you think the reading was valuable? I believe in a high level the reading was welcoming, however, there were definitely terms and technicalities that I was not familiar with, and cannot say I fully understood the concepts.

Which topics were notably confusing? I think the part I would like to explore more and have a better understanding would be Object and Array literals. They seemed to be powerful, but I did not quite understand the concept and how to apply it.

[kctrlv]

What was interesting? Most interesting to me was that Javascript is always deployed as 'source code' and compiled in the browser's engine. I'm interested in the learning how and when to use the 'quirky features' the article mentions such as prototypal inheritance.

Which sections did you totally skim? I skimmed Elegant Parts and Influences. Without a more in-depth involvement into each of these terms, knowing them on a surface level was not very meaningful to me.

Do you think the reading was valuable? It was a decent introduction to how Javascript works, but it was too theoretical. A lot of the terms are lost on me without seeing an example of it. I would have liked it if there were some interactive examples interspersed with the reading material to explain the meaning behind these terms.

Which topics were notably confusing? The Elegant Parts and Influences sections did not seem like they were meaningful to me at the time.