Approaching JavaScript

21 Jan 2021

---

Thoughts from a newbie

As someone who has very few experiences with programming, JavaScript comes across as something very easy to learn but hard to understand. My previous experiences with coding involves mostly object-oriented languages (Java, C/C++, Python). Because JavaScript shares the same characteristics, it is fairly easy to pick up. Most of the basic concepts are the same.

Comparison of JavaScript as a whole

JavaScript is a strange but interesting language. After recently learning about C/C++, I have a better understanding of how coding works and the data manipulation behind things. Because I am used to the rules of Java and C/C++, JavaScript can come across as confusing sometimes. There are things that work in funny ways such as comparison and logical operators (especially == and ===). There are advantages to this despite how weird it feels. Values of variables are now super loose. I no longer have to worry about passing it the correct way. I mean it feels weird not to tell and specify every little thing to the computer. And I suppose this could come across as a disadvantage also. Debugging in JavaScript becomes much harder because things are done for you through the language. You can’t change and manipulate specific things to your liking as much. But I suppose from a software engineering perspective, this language is much needed. Depending on if you are working on the front-end programming or back-end programming, JavaScript gives you that option to not focus on issues that aren’t in your workload and focus on tasks that are. It is useful for web development because you can just focus on manipulating the media instead. Overall, JavaScript is a much needed language. It is useful in terms that it provides people with a different path to coding.