Javascript Reflections
20 Jan 2017
Introduction
I love to code. There is beauty in the seamless meeting of logic and creativity. Like most, I started out learning Java before progressing onto the other languages, and it was where I found my passion for coding. Java has always made sense to me and while I don’t have a lot of experience in Javascript, I have always been optimistic about it. Since it is a language that is widely used professionally, it is absolutely crucial that one has an understanding of its capabilities and limits.
Experiences
As of now, I have a basic understanding of Javascript. I took a scripting class in 2016 where we spent a few weeks primarily learning about how it creates interactivity within web pages that are not achievable with HTML alone. I immediately liked how the language produced visual results that I did not see with Java. Unfortunately, the potential of the language was never revealed to me as we only spent a short time on it and the instructor did not spend any time lecturing. My classmates and I were self taught through online resources such as W3schools and spent the entire class time taking quizzes. While this method gave me confidence that I could learn any language on my own, it also felt incomplete as our instructor did not share enough of his knowledge with us.
Currently, I am taking a software engineering class that will devote a respectable amount of time on learning the language from the ground up. Some of the differences I noticed immediately was that Javascript has only 5 data types that can contain values: string, number, boolean, object, and function. As a result, declaring variables feels more intuitive than it did in Java. I also noticed that Javascript has an implicit global scope while Java has an implicit this-scope for non-static methods, and an implicit class scope. Actually, despite the name and similarities in syntax, Javascript seems to be much different than Java which is not what I expected.
Conclusion
I have high hopes for this language as well as this class. There are similarities to my scripting class as we will be using online resources to learn, but differs in that I have noticed that our professor, Dr. Johnson, takes the time to speak about his experiences. This sharing of knowledge is inspiring and in a short amount of time has shed light on Javascript’s potential. The “workouts of the day”, or WODs, are based on the concept of athletic software development which encourages daily practice and I believe this method of learning is effective.