Daniel Marino

Time to Learn JavaScript

I’m embarrassed by how little JavaScript I actually know. I’m lucky in the sense that I have a (little) background in programming, so when looking at JS, I can at least follow the logic (most of the time). Sometimes I get a little hung up on the syntax, but all in all, I can usually figure out what’s going on. I was using JS on one of my latest projects, and found myself against a wall because I couldn’t figure it out. I was able to get some outside help, thanks to the Godbit forum. I’ve decided its time to actually learn JS, and not fake it anymore.

I tip my hat to anyone that actually knows JavaScript, and knows it well. Apparently, its not like most programming languages. Unfortunately, I can’t really explain why. I’m just regurgitating (for the most part) what I’ve learned from watching the Yahoo JavaScript training sessions by Douglas Crockford. And don’t even ask me about DOM, AJAX or API – they’re pretty much just acronyms to me. Well, I do know what they stand for, I just don’t know much else than that. I’m sort of starting to figure out the concept of AJAX. I’ve read several definitions of all the acronyms, and it’s all tech talk to me. It just flies right over my head. It usually takes a repetitive effort on my part before I start figuring out a new technology and how it works.

There are also JavaScript libraries which are freely distributed, such as: jQuery, Mootools, and script.aculo.us. I recently figured out the concept behind JS libraries. In basic, they’re JS frameworks designed to make writing code easier and faster. I just used Mootools to implement a contact form that uses PHP to validate the form and uses AJAX to update the page with the status. The benefit is that the page doesn’t have to reload and it looks cool.

The Mootools blog somewhat recently posted “Help! I Don’t Know JavaScript!” This is a compiled list of JS resources that I’ve found quite useful over the past couple of days. I’ve been watching the Y! training sessions that I mentioned above. I don’t really know what Douglas is talking about most of the time, but I think I’m picking up bits here and there, which is how I usually learn.

It’s not enough for me knowing that something works. I want to know why it works. I feel incompetent when I can’t explain how one of my programs work. That’s probably why I feel like I’m cheating every time I use a JavaScript library. Even when I borrow a snippet of CSS or PHP, I feel a little dirty. I always go in to change all the variables, and try to customize it in some manner, so that I actually get something out of it. I am now starting to realize that using JS Libraries isn’t really cheating so much.