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RE: JSON, A Brief Explanation: Day Five of "The Complete Node.js Developer Course"
A great vid on javascript and the bits of the language that are best to use by Doug Crockford
(JavaScript: The Good Parts)[
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Thanks Woz,
I really like, in this video, when Doug says "Javascript is basically Scheme with C syntax". A long time ago, I read Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham and that got me interested in Scheme and Lisp. Unfortunately, I didn't push myself to really understand what was going on and I didn't "become a programmer" at that time.
Now, I do consider myself a programmer and I believe it is from being able to easily implement and test the the things I'm learning with Javascript in the browser (and now on the server and file system with node.js).
Javascript's accessibility has made it much easier for me to learn, and remember, programmatic concepts.
Yep, far faster turn around in something like JS. It is also becoming the de facto language almost anywhere. Just a shame they did not remove some of the "crap" in later revisions of the language.
It is a shame that too many think of JS as an OO language when it is really not. As the bit you highlighted, scheme with C syntax. When used OO it is awful but use as intended and can be really clean.
I still prefer the safety net of strong type checking personally but that is my background and the languages I grew up on.
So many languages compile down to JS also, there is even a C# to JS compiler.
The language I hope really grows client side is Elm. Pure functional stack based on ML. It is the language that inspired the React stack in JS that is gaining traction.
In the end it does not matter the language you learn, just that you learn from the mistakes you make on the way. But do learn other languages that are very different after you are comfortable with the first one. Each will teach you new ways of thinking about flow and data. This is why I am learning functional and F#. I is teaching me to think like a mathematician instead of a programmer. I will probably never work in it, too few jobs, but I love the mental spaces code takes me hence the never ending drive to learn :)