Ask HN: JavaScript as a first language?
7 comments
Not JavaScript – Prototypal inheritance is interesting and powerful. However, overall JavaScript does not afford good programming practices and does not cleanly expose important re-usable programming concepts. Between the good parts of JavaScript, there are nasty surprises.
I think python is a good first language for a few reasons.
1. Overall the syntax is clean, concise, and readable in the sense that the actual code can be close to "sudo" code, or that it is somewhat similar to what what you might encounter in a mathematics class.
2. From Wikipedia:
"Python supports multiple programming paradigms, including object-oriented, imperative and functional programming or procedural styles. It features a dynamic type system and automatic memory management and has a large and comprehensive standard library."
All of those programming paradigms are important to understand and few languages capture all of them as nicely as python. Also, static typing and memory management are important to understand – yet, mostly distracting while learning a first language. Python removes the distraction.
3. Python's strict white space rules will force you maintain a somewhat consistent code style – something that many new programmers are awful at.
This list is not exhaustive, just some thoughts.
I think python is a good first language for a few reasons.
1. Overall the syntax is clean, concise, and readable in the sense that the actual code can be close to "sudo" code, or that it is somewhat similar to what what you might encounter in a mathematics class.
2. From Wikipedia:
"Python supports multiple programming paradigms, including object-oriented, imperative and functional programming or procedural styles. It features a dynamic type system and automatic memory management and has a large and comprehensive standard library."
All of those programming paradigms are important to understand and few languages capture all of them as nicely as python. Also, static typing and memory management are important to understand – yet, mostly distracting while learning a first language. Python removes the distraction.
3. Python's strict white space rules will force you maintain a somewhat consistent code style – something that many new programmers are awful at.
This list is not exhaustive, just some thoughts.
+1 (wish I could have clicked +10) Python is increasingly being used in first programming language courses at many top-level universities and colleges. Learning good code structuring habits has considerable value down the track.
JavaScript is not even a good second or third language. Of course it is easy to cut and paste code and hack things. But when it doesn't work right you will go crazy trying to work out why.
To be good with JavaScript you need a rather substantial and solid grasp of CS fundamentals and how they are implemented in languages that are stricter about what they will accept and how.
In JavaScript there are too many situations where it either does something totally unexpected (well actually totally logical, but you need to know some pretty arcane stuff to see it that way) or it just fails silently or less likely with a terse exception.
For a beginning programmer that is very little feedback to help with overcoming the initial roadblock. Sometimes called the "getting helloworld to run problem". Trying to learn JS in a browser context is made even more difficult because you need to grapple with the DOM - it is not easy to grok at the best of times.
If you decide to ignore the advice in this and the other posts and go ahead learning JavaScript as the first language, then I suggest getting a very good introductory book and perhaps using Developer JavaScript Console. The debugger is good in that you can single step code and watch variables as they change. You will probably need to take copious notes to understand what is going on.
To be a competent programmer is more than learning a language, it requires a solid foundation in computer science and software engineering. Whilst these topics can be learnt from a book, most people need guidance from those who have acquired such knowledge. Whether they can be bothered answering newbie's questions is another matter.
To be good with JavaScript you need a rather substantial and solid grasp of CS fundamentals and how they are implemented in languages that are stricter about what they will accept and how.
In JavaScript there are too many situations where it either does something totally unexpected (well actually totally logical, but you need to know some pretty arcane stuff to see it that way) or it just fails silently or less likely with a terse exception.
For a beginning programmer that is very little feedback to help with overcoming the initial roadblock. Sometimes called the "getting helloworld to run problem". Trying to learn JS in a browser context is made even more difficult because you need to grapple with the DOM - it is not easy to grok at the best of times.
If you decide to ignore the advice in this and the other posts and go ahead learning JavaScript as the first language, then I suggest getting a very good introductory book and perhaps using Developer JavaScript Console. The debugger is good in that you can single step code and watch variables as they change. You will probably need to take copious notes to understand what is going on.
To be a competent programmer is more than learning a language, it requires a solid foundation in computer science and software engineering. Whilst these topics can be learnt from a book, most people need guidance from those who have acquired such knowledge. Whether they can be bothered answering newbie's questions is another matter.
What you're saying is pretty accurate and I agree. But the problems you enumerate are ironically the best parts about learning JavaScript at the same time.
Failing silently - it's nice to have 'incorrect' programs still do stuff when learning. Who wants to spend hours tracking problems they cannot even comprehend? Figuring out the DOM - tricky indeed. But it's at least superficially familiar to everyone. Browsers have great tools to inspect and play around with it. You have to learn so much more of insert other language to output to the DOM (or other graphical environments).
My advice: Learn underscore. Always refer to Mozilla's docs first (avoid w3schools). Learn ins and outs of Chrome DevTools (or the FF equivalent).
If you end up wanting to choose a different language - either go lower-level (Go, Java, Swift, C-family etc) or higher-level (any LISP pretty much).
Failing silently - it's nice to have 'incorrect' programs still do stuff when learning. Who wants to spend hours tracking problems they cannot even comprehend? Figuring out the DOM - tricky indeed. But it's at least superficially familiar to everyone. Browsers have great tools to inspect and play around with it. You have to learn so much more of insert other language to output to the DOM (or other graphical environments).
My advice: Learn underscore. Always refer to Mozilla's docs first (avoid w3schools). Learn ins and outs of Chrome DevTools (or the FF equivalent).
If you end up wanting to choose a different language - either go lower-level (Go, Java, Swift, C-family etc) or higher-level (any LISP pretty much).
As for DOM I agree. DOM provides a rather rich collection of widgets with which to create "interesting" output which with most other languages requires a GUI framework with its own learning curve. The DOM learning process which worked for me was to :
Write a simple page in HTML, then open it in Dev Tools and understand the structure, etc.
Then re-create it using document.createElement(), etc.
I've re-read parts of David Flanagan's "Javascript the Definitive Guide" many times before I became proficient with many essential concepts in JS. I recommend the book (yes in hardcopy) as a valuable adjunct to Mozilla's docs.
Write a simple page in HTML, then open it in Dev Tools and understand the structure, etc.
Then re-create it using document.createElement(), etc.
I've re-read parts of David Flanagan's "Javascript the Definitive Guide" many times before I became proficient with many essential concepts in JS. I recommend the book (yes in hardcopy) as a valuable adjunct to Mozilla's docs.
Look at "hello world" in Javascript and Python. Then look at "ask user for their name and display "Hello user's name"" in Python and Javascript.
https://wiki.python.org/moin/SimplePrograms
https://wiki.python.org/moin/SimplePrograms
name = raw_input('What is your name?\n')
print 'Hi, %s.' % name
var who = window.prompt("What is your name");
document.write("Hello " + who);
Thanks for the examples, it clearly demonstrates that JS on its own can't even provide minimal I/O. That is by design, in the ECMA 262 standard, it specifies the need for additional objects to provide the I/O. The core language is for scripting the "extension objects".
In my experience, the answer to this question largely depends on what your ultimate goals are.
Want to become a competent programmer and do that for a living? The advice in this thread is solid (particularly @CyberFonic's).
If you simply want to hack/glue-up/play around with some side projects, I once heard someone suggest you pick the language your close friends know best and buy them lots of beer.
In my case, I needed a newbie-friendly prototyping tool and JavaScript/Meteor has served me well.
So, give us an idea of your goals, and I'm sure the community here will be able to steer you in the right direction.
Want to become a competent programmer and do that for a living? The advice in this thread is solid (particularly @CyberFonic's).
If you simply want to hack/glue-up/play around with some side projects, I once heard someone suggest you pick the language your close friends know best and buy them lots of beer.
In my case, I needed a newbie-friendly prototyping tool and JavaScript/Meteor has served me well.
So, give us an idea of your goals, and I'm sure the community here will be able to steer you in the right direction.
Well if someone asks me then I would never ever recommend him to pick javascript as his first language. Actually javascript is a very different language as compared to other languages, its a prototype based language which is not easy to swallow at first, I have seen many experienced developers who have been into web-development for years using either PHP or Rails even .Net but they are really weak when it comes to javascript. I would recommend you to pick up either PHP (which is really easy to understand) or ruby.
let see what others say
let see what others say
I would recommend . . .
I would start with this progression . . .
HTML->CSS->Javascript then PHP/MySQL then once you have a handle on creating a simple web app with PHP/MySQL look at either Rails/Ruby or Laravel/PHP . . . it's tough to understand all the magic going on in Rails/Laravel till you've created a basic app from scratch Login/Logout/CRUD etc . . .
Railscasts.com and Laracasts.com are great tools for learning those. But get a decent foundation before moving to a framework . . . then you can add things like Angular on top of your app.
Railscasts.com and Laracasts.com are great tools for learning those. But get a decent foundation before moving to a framework . . . then you can add things like Angular on top of your app.
In principle I aggree with saluki - I'd just add a little explanation:
JavaScript lets you control HTML elements, so it would be rather hard to begin with just JavaScript. Styles in CSS are currently indispensable when writing any HTML unless you want to rely on crude default formatting. That's why it's HTML -> CSS -> JS and not the other way around.
Moreover you have to understand that JavaScript is a client-side scripting language, that is to say that your scripts will be downloaded and executed solely and entirely on your computer. You will not have any way to open, read and write to files (except for cookies), because your script "lives" only inside the browser.
If you want your code not to be seen by a visitor of your website, or if you want the code to be executed before the page is downloaded and displayed in a browser, you need a server-side scipts like PHP or ASP so that for example the visitor has only access to the parts of the website you want him/her to read, or display content depending on the user login and password.
Later you will see that for storing and manipulating larger amounts of data you'll need a data base server, which makes sorting and managing information much easier and faster than if you'd accessed files directly from your servers' hard drive.
PHP and MySQL are for free and therefore they are recommendable for beginners - alternatives are Microsoft's .Net + MS SQL and many many other, which are arguably more robust for commercial, enterprise level applications.
Node.js is however a more modern way of doing things on-line, PHP belongs to the 2000s.
jQuery is good once you realise why plain javascript s*cks a great deal ;)
Staring your journey with online tools such as JS is ok, but it may be difficult to later jump into more... how should I put it... "serious?" languages - once you want to build your own standalone application software that runs outside a browser (not only because you have to use a compiler, but also because you have to pay attention to more details and plan ahead). For instance it's not impossible, but it seems that, switching from strong typed languages like C to weak typed is easier than the other way around.
Please do never underestimate or neglect learning about design patterns, data structures and algorithms no matter what language you're using or intend to learn.
JavaScript lets you control HTML elements, so it would be rather hard to begin with just JavaScript. Styles in CSS are currently indispensable when writing any HTML unless you want to rely on crude default formatting. That's why it's HTML -> CSS -> JS and not the other way around.
Moreover you have to understand that JavaScript is a client-side scripting language, that is to say that your scripts will be downloaded and executed solely and entirely on your computer. You will not have any way to open, read and write to files (except for cookies), because your script "lives" only inside the browser.
If you want your code not to be seen by a visitor of your website, or if you want the code to be executed before the page is downloaded and displayed in a browser, you need a server-side scipts like PHP or ASP so that for example the visitor has only access to the parts of the website you want him/her to read, or display content depending on the user login and password.
Later you will see that for storing and manipulating larger amounts of data you'll need a data base server, which makes sorting and managing information much easier and faster than if you'd accessed files directly from your servers' hard drive.
PHP and MySQL are for free and therefore they are recommendable for beginners - alternatives are Microsoft's .Net + MS SQL and many many other, which are arguably more robust for commercial, enterprise level applications.
Node.js is however a more modern way of doing things on-line, PHP belongs to the 2000s.
jQuery is good once you realise why plain javascript s*cks a great deal ;)
Staring your journey with online tools such as JS is ok, but it may be difficult to later jump into more... how should I put it... "serious?" languages - once you want to build your own standalone application software that runs outside a browser (not only because you have to use a compiler, but also because you have to pay attention to more details and plan ahead). For instance it's not impossible, but it seems that, switching from strong typed languages like C to weak typed is easier than the other way around.
Please do never underestimate or neglect learning about design patterns, data structures and algorithms no matter what language you're using or intend to learn.
Javascript is a fine language to learn. It should teach you the basic elements that all languages have. That it is asynchronous is the only major thing that is different than some other languages.
Question is, is there any reason not to pick javascript as a first language? Been hearing alot about Node.js and Meteor, any downsides to picking it over something like ruby?
Would be great to hear your thoughts.