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How Much JavaScript Do You Need To Know For an Entry-Level Job?
Nerval's Lobster writes: JavaScript is a programming language that's easy to pick up, but extremely difficult to master. Even some of its beginner-level functions are decidedly not beginner-friendly. When someone lands their first JavaScript job, they're going to want to know as much as possible, if only so they can navigate through some of the language's trickier aspects without needing to ask for help. Developer Jeff Cogswell picked through JavaScript and came away with a couple of lists of what he thought were the minimum baseline of skills for JavaScript use in a work context. That list included understanding how to use built-in objects, functions , closures, and DOM (Document Object Model). While his points are comprehensive, not everyone will necessarily agree with what he lists (and doesn't list).
Java != JavaScript; not even close, really.
I've been programming professionally since the 1970s. I cut my teeth on COBOL, ALGOL, FORTRAN, and PL/I. Then I did years of Ada, a few months of Smalltalk, some Modula-2, and years of C and C++. I very briefly used Objective-C on actual NeXT systems. Then came a decade of Java, with some Delphi, VB and Perl. That was followed by some time with PHP, Ruby and JavaScript. Of all of those languages, JavaScript was the hardest to learn, and even after using it for years, it is the hardest to use. It's just so fucking awful, and I've worked with some pretty awful languages in the past. So much of it is just plain dumb. It's the kind of dumb that just shouldn't happen. It's the kind of dumb that shouldn't be allowed to exist 20 years on, even if it was first introduced during a rushed release! What's dumber is when people defend the dumbness as if it's some kind of a feature or a benefit. It's neither of those. It's just dumbness gone wild. It's fucking idiotic that it has taken over 20 years for JavaScript to get something that barely resembles a usable form of object orientation. It's stupid that its standard library is so terribly lacking, and what is there is mighty shitty. It's beyond belief how bad its type system is, and how awful its automatic type conversions are. Something is really fucking wrong when a so-called 'modern' language is worse than the ones developed 20 or 30 years prior to it, back when programming language design was in its infancy. That's right: the people who developed the earliest programming languages managed to do a much better job at it than those who have created JavaScript, decades later. In the 1980s and 1990s, I never though I'd be dealing with a programming language as shitty as JavaScript, especially so far into the future. We could have done great things, yet now we're saddled with the worst programming language around.
While Angular and React might be all the rage today, you're expected to be an expert in whatever framework comes out tomorrow.
You should be able to write the same Todo List application several thousand times, justifying the existence of each one.
You should also demonstrate a strong desire to re-implement every single piece of software in existence in Javascript, including Linux (http://bellard.org/jslinux/), 8bit Console Emulators (https://fir.sh/projects/jsnes/), and possibly the software that drives your Kuerig. For example, I would expect you to tell me that you're just dying to start a new github project where you'll re-implement MS Flight Simulator 10 in Javascript, and how awesome the cockpit checklist feature will be.
You must demonstrate a complete misunderstanding of the differences between asynchronous and concurrent, and you must also be able to give a short presentation on what "web scale" means, without being able to explain it. You'll probably win a few favors by throwing in the term "cloud".
This and more, is what it takes to be a 21st century javascript developer.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
Considering the comment, glad you did.
One is essentially a toy, designed for writing small pieces of code, and traditionally used and abused by inexperienced programmers.
The other is a scripting language for web browsers.
AMEN! The "best" part about Javascript is that if you don't use that stupid HACK:
"use strict";
at the beginning of your .js file it will behave _worse_ then shitty BASIC. Didn't we learn _anything_ about using variable without declaring them??
"Javascript: 10 days for the designer, 10 years of frustrations for users"
* http://www.computer.org/csdl/m...
PHP is another fucking retarded language.
Why the hell does the internet run on 2 of the shittiest languages ever half-assed designed??
> What's dumber is when people defend the dumbness as if it's some kind of a feature or a benefit.
You're talking about automatic-semi-colon insertion aren't ?
Someone needs to be taken out back and shot for all the pain and suffering that bullshit "feature" has caused.
Followed by,
"I know all the languages; what else do I need to get an entry level job. Any job. I haven't worked in years -- I'm desperate! Please!"
High unemployment has a terrible social cost.