Learn JavaScript
Learn JavaScript and you’ll understand one of the most fundamental tools available to a professional web developer. While you can choose from many languages while building the server side code, JavaScript is the only language you can use to build interactive web applications. So much of what we use and play with every day is JavaScript-based. Want to be able to really create on the web? You want to learn JavaScript.
Because it’s so fundamental, learning JavaScript is a huge bonus for young or aspiring developers who want to get involved with things people actually use. There is no shortage of jobs for good JS developers and there won’t be for a long time yet. It’s a very helpful thing to have on your CV.
Although we have JavaScript tutorials and course materials for intermediate and advanced coders as well, JavaScript is pretty simple to pick up and it makes a great first programming language. You’ll start to build functional code quickly, and will soon be well on your way to making fully-fledged toys and tools for the web.
The Weekly Iteration
Chris Toomey
On this weeks episode Chris presents an introduction to Facebook's React.js framework. React is a JavaScript framework used for building dynamic UIs. Learn why React is interesting and what makes it different from the other frameworks for JS UIs.
Matthew Sumner and Ben Orenstein
Matt joins Ben to discuss the pros and cons of Ember, as well as resources to get started learning this framework for creating ambitious web applications.
Ben Orenstein and Joe Ferris
Watch Ben and Joe move some gnarly CoffeeScript into a TDD'd class. Bonus: Ben being bad at JavaScript. Tools mentioned: Mocha Chai Konacha
Chris is joined by Blake Williams for a discussion about ES6, the collection of proposed enhancements and updates to the JavaScript specification.
Matthew Sumner and Chris Toomey
Promises are an abstraction that makes working with asynchronous code more manageable and consistent. Rather than passing a callback function to an asynchronous operation (and possibly falling into the dreaded callback pyramid of doom), the...
Chris Toomey and Giles Van Gruisen
React Native is a project from Facebook that allows developers to use React to build native mobile applications. This presents an amazing opportunity as now we can use the same tools, workflows, and approach to build for both web and mobile,...
Chris Toomey and Connie Chan
Historically, developers and designers have reached for JavaScript to build certain presentational features such as animations and transitions. With modern CSS features, some of these capabilities can now be achieved with little to no JavaScript....