I recently got a contract offer with a major communications company in Toronto for a ReactJs and NodeJs role. While I was considering joining the team, I decided to go deeper into the world of Javascript.
Many programmers will tell you they have trouble understanding JS. It was after reading this book by Darren Jones, “JavaScript: Novice to Ninja” that I truly understood why.
This book explains Javascript from the ground up. So if you’re new to programming you’ll enjoy reading the entire book from the beginning; and if you’re a software developer from a more traditional programming background, you will enjoy skipping ahead to the chapters that talk about Javascript Functions, Objects, Functional Programming and Object Oriented Programming in JS.
In a nutshell, for us traditional programmers, JavaScript is a functional programming language. There are caveats to that term that you will understand better after fully reading the above mentioned sections of the book.
Functional Programming is different from procedural programming, which uses a lot of functions! First class functions essentially create these mutant (light humour) objects called functions. These functions can behave like traditional functions in PHP; or they can be assigned and treated as special function-objects with a boatload of features to boast.
I do suggest everyone in the field to read the book even if you’re not getting a NodeJs job any time soon. JS is all around us, and it’s good to be able to decipher complex JS logic much like you would any other language.
Happy reading!
