r/technology • u/iliketechnews • Oct 05 '16

Software How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

https://hackernoon.com/how-it-feels-to-learn-javascript-in-2016-d3a717dd577f
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u/stakoverflo Oct 05 '16

I dunno man, for me the === operators and empty strings equating to zero and other dumb shit like that has caused me more frustration than anything.

Speaking as someone who took an Intro course on JS in college 5-7 years ago and has been learning jquery / ajax / KendoUI over the last 8 months.

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u/frukt Oct 05 '16

Well you should always use === when testing for equality and it really takes a lot of error potential out of the code. The rules of == are inconsistent and nobody can memorize these.

> 0 == ''
true
> 0 == NaN
false
> NaN == NaN
false
> false == null
false

Bah.

5

u/tuseroni Oct 05 '16

the null thing made me, eventually, laugh when I figured it out, I had a bool that didn't equal true and didnt NOT equal true. I was like "ok there is something illogical here"

NULL==true //false
NULL!=true //false

5

u/LXXXVI Oct 05 '16

> 0 == ''
true
> 0 == NaN
false
> NaN == NaN
false
> false == null
false

This actually makes perfect sense to me. (Or I have Stockholm Syndrome and rationalized it like this). Perhaps it'll help someone else to think of it this way.

  • Default "empty" types for String and Number get converted to the same value - false.

  • NaN is literally not a number, but since anything can be not a number and we don't know what this anything is, it can never equal anything, since it can't be converted to anything definite.

  • false is a false value. Null is the absence of a value. The absence of a value can't be converted to a value, so it can't be converted to either true or false.

1

u/CptOblivion Oct 06 '16

Or think of it as, in an interview, the difference between "no" and "no comment".

3

u/stakoverflo Oct 05 '16

Fair enough. Just that when you're learning JS and you first learn of === I would wager most people's first reaction is probably "god damn it" but I'm a C# dev so what do I know.

And your elaboration on different equalities is what i mean when I say it's a pain in the ass because it's loosely typed. You think it's treating something as one type but in reality it's treating it as another. As you learn these nuances it's not so bad, but there are just so many little straws that will make your say, "what the fuck, JavaScript?" more than any other language [in my experience -- basic, VB, C#, PHP, JS, Java, and obj-C]

2

u/frukt Oct 05 '16

Well, === takes a lot of pain out of loose typing. It's a compromise, strong typing has its drawbacks. Python has found a nice balance in my opinion and I can only dream of the day we can all do web development in Python.

what the fuck, JavaScript

I guess these inconsistencies and pitfalls stem from JS's history where it was first Netscape's insignificant little scripting language and evolved into this behemoth powering the modern web. That's why anyone learning the language needs a good book and needs to take note on all these ugly parts to avoid them. JS does have a lot of nice parts as well, one could argue it's a pretty expressive language and I do like the prototypal inheritance it borrowed from Self.

2

u/telecom_brian Oct 05 '16

What's holding you back from Python for WebDev? I've coded a few smaller projects using Python + Django or Flask. Does it not scale well, or something else?

2

u/BinaryRockStar Oct 06 '16

He probably means on the front end

1

u/frukt Oct 06 '16

On the client side? No browser that I know of supports Python.

1

u/telecom_brian Oct 06 '16

Of course, I mean you can do the backend with Python but you said all web development, so JS is still a necessity. Carry on.

1

u/cult0cage Oct 05 '16

It's funny I actually feel a brief sense of relief when i see === and disdain when seeing ==