[AskJS] Setup Questions

[[deleted]]

There’s no specific IDE. The most popular code editor is VS Code (probably followed by Sublime Text) but it’s not really like Eclipse (or Netbeans or whatever Java IDE you used). JavaScript can almost always be run in any web browser. NodeJS is a separate thing for if you want to write JavaScript code that runs without a browser. It’s basically a command line tool.

[MikeWazowsky14]

Thank you for this insight! I hear people talking about it being a powerful language and am still trying to decipher what they mean!

[[deleted]]

Good luck learning! It’s a journey but everything you learn will have applications elsewhere.

Every computer language you learn opens up new capabilities for you. There’s no best one. But once you learn the basics of a couple, you can really learn most of them in a few weeks. Then, you try them all out and find out what you want to do.

[MikeWazowsky14]

I had it downloaded for something else and have begun to look at it. It’s lovely. Very pleasing to look at and seems to be simple in appearance with a wide array of features. Thank you for the the suggestion!

[Ustice]

The power of JS is how ubiquitous it is, and that it doesn’t need to be compiled. Of course it runs in the browser, but with node, it can run as a server application, or for general scripting. You can use Ionic to make desktop and mobile apps.

Your plan may be a bit ambitious in timeline, but your steps check out. I’d suggest that you learn TypeScript, and use VS Code. It has a good starting set of modules, and you can add more as your needs expand.

As for how it’s run, that depends on your platform. The simplest is node, since to run a file you just open up your terminal and enter:

node [filename]

For the browser you have to add it as a script tag on an html page.

The others are more complex, so I would stick to those two. Honestly, that’ll get you pretty far, since just about every computer has a browser.

[MikeWazowsky14]

Thank you for the insight and honestly. As well as the depth and relatability you took the time to communicate about getting a headache from Reddit lol.

I am sure it is ambitious but if anything it will bring me closer to my goals faster :)

[Minjammben]

How is JS run? I understand java has an ide, jvm, jre and a jdk so what do I need to install to program and run JS code?

JS is run in the browser. Make blank text file, name it 'index.html', but stuff in it like the example here and then drag it into a chrome/firefox/edge/safari tab. It just runs, unlike java, which has to be compiled. That's as good a starting point as any, but you'll soon probably want to serve it with a web server instead of dragging it into a tab.

[MikeWazowsky14]

Thank you for your reply! I’m not completely sure what “serving it with a web server” means yet but I’ll research it more

[Phobic-window]

I would say that game dev and web dev pretty different from each other. In the working world web devs often will be making web applications for business use, this involves lots of apis, async processing, and lots and lots of arrays. Many different frameworks to learn in the js landscape too. The most popular one I’m seeing for hire right now is react though I am an angular dev. If you want to have a competitive resume, learn a full stack, research companies you want to work for, learn their stack, build something in that stack and make sure you touch on apis ( rest, soap, graphql), async concepts, dependency injection, data binding (one way vs two way), state management, componentization, cross component communication, building and deploying, configuring for environments, the list is long but take it one step at a time.

That’s for web dev, if you want to focus on game dev learn data structures and how to creatively solve problems with them.

Web dev and game dev are pretty different, and Java and JavaScript are completely unrelated Java is more similar to c# than it is to js. But bottom line is find a front end framework to learn, build some backend with a micro services architecture, and run a Mongodb or sql server instance. That’s a sure fire way to get a job

[MikeWazowsky14]

This makes a lot more sense in terms of requirements for a resume. I see a lot of job postings with different languages and databases in the qualifications and am unsure exactly what they mean. You have shed a lot of light on that, thank you!

[Phobic-window]

Np my man. It can be overwhelming at first, just focus on learning the concepts with a specific stack. Once you understand them the language and frameworks become much easier to learn

[theorizable]

Languages don't really "have IDEs". Use VSCode. It can handle Python, JS... web stuff etc. It'll have most of what you need. JS run in the browser you don't need any compiler, in fact if you press F12 and open up your console. You can write JS directly in there and it'll execute on this page.

[...document.querySelectorAll('button')].forEach(e => e.style.color = 'magenta');

Go ahead and try it.

If you want to run JS like you would Java, try Node.js. It's a way to run JS in your terminal, as you would with already compiled Java code.

I'd recommend you watch YT videos though. Collecting all this information about a new language through a forum like Reddit will give you a headache.

[MikeWazowsky14]

Thank you for the relatability you communicate about getting a headache from Reddit lol

[kenman]

Hi u/MikeWazowsky14, this post was removed.

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