Kyle Simpson - You Don’t Know JS: Up & Going

by Kyle Simpson

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978-1-491-92446-4

[LSI]

What was the last new thing you learned?

Perhaps it was a foreign language, like Italian or German. Or maybe itwas a graphics editor, like Photoshop. Or a cooking technique orwoodworking or an exercise routine. I want you to remember that feelingwhen you finally got it: the lightbulb moment. When things went fromblurry to crystal clear, as you mastered the table saw or understood thedifference between masculine and feminine nouns in French. How did itfeel? Pretty amazing, right?

Now I want you to travel back a little bit further in your memory toright before you learned your new skill. How did that feel? Probablyslightly intimidating and maybe a little bit frustrating, right? At onepoint, we all did not know the things that we know now, and thatstotally OK; we all start somewhere. Learning new material is an excitingadventure, especially if you are looking to learn the subjectefficiently.

I teach a lot of beginner coding classes. The students who take myclasses have often tried teaching themselves subjects like HTML orJavaScript by reading blog posts or copying and pasting code, but theyhavent been able to truly master the material that will allow them tocode their desired outcome. And because they dont truly grasp the insand outs of certain coding topics, they cant write powerful code ordebug their own work because they dont really understand what is happening.

I always believe in teaching my classes the proper way, meaning I teachweb standards, semantic markup, well-commented code, and other bestpractices. I cover the subject in a thorough manner to explain the howsand whys, without just tossing out code to copy and paste. When youstrive to comprehend your code, you create better work and become betterat what you do. The code isnt just your job anymore, its yourcraft. This is why I love Up & Going. Kyle takes us on a deep divethrough syntax and terminology to give a great introduction toJavaScript without cutting corners. This book doesnt skim over thesurface but really allows us to genuinely understand the concepts.

Because its not enough to be able to duplicate jQuery snippets intoyour website, the same way its not enough to learn how to open, close,and save a document in Photoshop. Sure, once I learned a few basics aboutthe program, I could create and share a design I made. But withoutlegitimately knowing the tools and what is behind them, how can I definea grid, or craft a legible type system, or optimize graphics for webuse. The same goes for JavaScript. Without knowing how loops work, orhow to define variables, or what scope is, we wont be writing the bestcode we can. We dont want to settle for anything lessthis is, afterall, our craft.

The more you are exposed to JavaScript, the clearer it becomes. Wordslike closures, objects, and methods might seem out of reach to you now,but this book will help those terms come into clarity. I want you tokeep those two feelings of before and after you learn something in mindas you begin this book. It might seem daunting, but youve picked upthis book because you are starting an awesome journey to hone yourknowledge. Up & Going is the start of our path to understandingprogramming. Enjoy the lightbulb moments!

Jenn Lukas (http://jennlukas.com, @jennlukas), Frontend consultant