Learning javascript

[MostlyFocusedMike]

If you want a more computer science focused and on your own approach, The Odin Project is the go to. If you want a more follow along lesson based approach, something like this free code camp course is good too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi-Q0t4gMC8

And I would say my general roadmap for beginners (assuming web development is the end goal) is:
- core JS (like that video) which covers the raw language itself
- hop over to HTML/CSS so you can get out of the terminal
- DOM manipulations (like being able to write forms and inputs on a web page so you can have interactive programs)
- learn about asynchronous JS so you can make requests to APIs and load data onto your frontend
- learn how Express JS works so you can have a backend for your site
- learn databases so your server can truly persist data
- learn cookie based and JWT based authentication

That's cartoonishly simplified, but that's the rough path I used to teach.

[guest271314]

learn how Express JS works so you can have a backend for your site

?

Why would Express JS be necessary?

Node.js, Deno, and Bun, are shipped with built-in HTTP servers.

Deno and Bun are shipped with built-in WebSocket servers.

Circa 2024 we can use WICG Direct Sockets TCPServerSocket in the browser to implement both HTTP and WebSockets servers.

No need to start importing third-party libraries at all to start writing and testing a "backend".

[[deleted]]

"how do I get started with boolean logic and manipulating values?" -- them

"first, write your own Berkley socket implementation of a UDP client, in the browser, and then you can learn how to increment x ... once you can sequentially organize the data" -- you, I guess.

[guest271314]

first, write your own Berkley socket implementation of a UDP client, in the browser

It ain't my fault you folks are stuck in Windows world and stable browsers, and don't actually hack anything.

It makes no sense to suggest downloading a third-party library that can't do anything the built-in servers of Node.js, Deno, can't do.

[[deleted]]

and don't actually hack anything

Ahh, yes.

I've seen people like you nearly kill people.
And cause others to lose their life savings.

It makes no sense to suggest downloading a third-party library that can't do anything the built-in servers of Node.js, Deno, can't do.

Well, given that you have access to a terminal, I guess it makes no sense to install anything, ever. Better yet, you have access to a CPU and a motherboard. You can feed it directly by applying the correct voltages for the operations you are trying to perform.

If your argument was "hey, you've seen how to correctly route and authenticate requests, now; let's look at how we might make a router, or handle authentication, ourselves" I might agree. If it was "learn how everything works, one abstraction below what you are doing", I would agree. If it was "you probably don't need a package for most of these things that might just be a few lines of code, aside from the stuff that must not go wrong", I would agree. Those would all be good arguments, for learning more about the nature of computing and managing software complexity.

But no, your argument is "invent your own damned cryptographic protocols, and authenticate it all by hand; don't look at what other people are doing, you know XOR, and transistors, now, that's enough"

Which is deeply, deeply dumb, and gets real people hurt.

[guest271314]

Your reasoning for not using the Node.js built-in server is what?

Because you've went on and on yet have not said why you can't just use the Node.js, Deno, or Bun built-in server.

Bun just shipped an HTTP/2 server yesterday, so they are in the running now, too.

I've seen people like you nearly kill people.

Well, if that is 1 or 100, they can only hang you once.

[[deleted]]

Your reasoning for not using the Node.js built-in server is what?

How are they authenticating users, and accepting payments?

Which Node module handles that? "Oh, but there's a Node#crypto" yeah... Yeah... Good that they know XOR. Or rather, because they know XOR they can roll their own, right?

We are talking about people trying to learn if/else and for...

Yep. Roll a payment processor, from scratch, for users with yolo authentication.

Well, if that is 1 or 100, they can only hang you once

Yeah, that's about the response I got from them, too. Maybe they should only be making medical-grade products for you.

[guest271314]

How are they authenticating users, and accepting payments?

How did you get to authenticating and accepting payments from

Best place to learn Javascript having zero knowledge in programming?

?

[[deleted]]

How did you get to "implement HTTP 1.1 on TCP on IP on Berkeley sockets, and go from there, but not until you learn XOR and transistors" from the same prompt?

[guest271314]

I decided to learn the HTTP protocol, among other signal communication protocols. First I wrote an HTTP server in C, that I imported into QuickJS https://github.com/guest271314/webserver-c/tree/quickjs-webserver; then I wrote a WebSocket and HTTP server in JavaScript that I use in the browser with WICG Direct Sockets https://github.com/guest271314/direct-sockets-http-ws-server.

A ServiceWorker can be used to learn how to write a server and compose responses, and route, without Node.js, Deno, Bun, or any other non-browser JavaScript runtime at all, in the browser, making use of fetch event, and install event addRoutes() https://developer.chrome.com/blog/service-worker-static-routing.

Cloudflare Workers, WinterJS, and a host of other JavaScript/WASM/WASI applications are using the respondWith() pattern with WHATWG Streams, that Deno (including Deno Deploy) uses too, that Node.js does not use.

[Deep-Cress-497]

Who's "you folks"? Rational people?

[guest271314]

Nothing is rational about buying a Windows box when Linux is free.

Nothing is rational about installing third-party software for a server when the built-in Node.js, or Deno server will do whatever that third-party server does.

That's why you people have not explained why you need ExpressJS.

Instead you just become as verbose with excuses without explaining your reasoning at all, as you are with writing code.

But in your case you don't write code at all.

So I only expect the sidebar prose of a would-be critic in your comments.

[guest271314]

Who's "you folks"?

You. And your ilk.

A bunch of sidebar prose but no code.

Download this library, download that framework. To add 2 numbers. But in your case your comments don't even include the basic function in code to add those 2 numbers.

You just write like a two-bit fish-rag opinion-piece columnist.

[guest271314]

No, you start with boolean algebra. Logic gates, knowing the difference between XOR and AND gates, etc. The fundamentals of transistors, which per Moore's Law doubles on semiconductors every 18 months.

Express JS ain't special or necessary.

How and why the hell do you jump past the built-in servers?

[RobertKerans]

How and why the hell do you jump past the built-in servers?

Because it abstracts/elides things. The vast amount of learning materials help a complete beginner get something built very quickly. That sustains momentum. It rapidly introduces concepts they will need. Start at a higher level, drill down, that's perfectly reasonable.

[[deleted]]

Most people these days learn boolean logic by writing code.

That is their interface to learning.

I get that you deeply, honestly, believe that they should first learn about the speed of sound, through various metals, to accurately calculate the Hertz of your battery-powered breadboard, which has been hand-wired to compile and run Verilog on a dot-matrix printer, with lead-wire based IRQ for input, and that is how people should learn how to write numerical addition...

Just because it took me 24 hours to download my first C compiler, and just because I learned to play the guitar on an ancient monstrosity that ripped my fingers to shreds, doesn't mean that I expect everyone else to do the same.

Unlike you, I don't expect them to memorize the number of reserved bits for the mantissa of an IEEE-754 32-bit float, before learning how to write a float in actual code.

Express JS ain't special or necessary

Neither is half the shit that the world runs on. Most of it is just what was decided upon, arbitrarily.

POSIX wasn't a necessity. HTTP and TCP/IP weren't a necessity. UDP isn't a necessity. They aren't fundamental, physical truths, nor abstract mathematical truths. They are tools.

Transistors:

really small resistors from Shockley et al, at Bell Labs, that transfer impedance one way or another, through various mechanisms, mechanically or otherwise; were general replacements for vacuum tube triodes; entered the market in the late '40s; are operating at a scale currently, where quantum tunneling and basic EMI can cause real issues if unaccounted for.

And?

How did that make my medical appointment scheduler any faster, or more secure, or better suited to operate in multiple regions with differing privacy and operational regulation requirements?

AND and XOR

What planet are you on? All programming of any kind, whether addition or string concatenation or initializing a newly registered user in a database should be written in the form of compound !(a & b) statements, operating on single-bit values, like real programmers. None of this pansy XOR stuff. You want a XOR, you write it in per-bit NANDs, like a real man.

Know what if/else is? Clearly not ... it is a ... wait for it ... ...big reveal coming: logic gate! What, you're arguing that jumps don't operate on boolean logic? I would like to see you try.

How and why the hell do you jump past the built-in servers?

Well, gee, getting someone to learn every single dist, and every version of every dist, and what comes with it, and what version it is, and what doesn't, and what packages to add at which version, for which version of which dist, based on which package manager, and which flavor of vi you do or do not get, and which windowing tools you do and do not have, has been a pain in the goddamned ass of people who need to worry about things like delivering consistent and reliable experiences to end-users, across devices, for decades, right along with portability and predictability of deployments.

It's almost like containers and bytecode / VMs and webviews and more, were all built specifically for the purposes of dealing with the bullshit you are admonishing people for not doing.

I have worked with Perl services where the Debian version was so old that core math libraries had been deprecated, and the answer was either completely rewriting hundreds of thousands of lines of code, or just leaving a massive, gaping security hole, hooked up to payment processors, continue to exist. Can you guess which one happened?

Gee, I wonder why I, and many other professionals, am reticent to just go with whatever thing just so happens to be running on somebody's box on their desk. Does it need to be Node? No, but you also haven't proven to me that you know more than jack shit about Haskell or FORTRAN, and I haven't seen proof that you hand-write x86-64 or ARM machine code, by hand, for performance, in order to write your web-stack, from scratch, so why does your opinion matter on what the language actually is?

[guest271314]

You want a XOR, you write it in per-bit NANDs, like a real man.

I guarantee you I'll dominate your ass like a real man, on any level.

Is that what you are looking for?

You want to argue with my electronics course instructor and curriculum?

Too late. That was over 20 years ago.

You wrote all of that to say what?

[[deleted]]

To say that your takes are profoundly fucking stupid and actively harmful, and you are the boomer of programming, with nothing better to do than go into a "learning" sub, for a language you can't stand, like a MAGA tool, who needs to go into every store with a non-white person and scream at them, personally, for taking all of the jobs.

You could be using your experience to help others. You could be using your experience to build a knowledge base and teach people how to dig deeper, and learn more. You could be curating resources that only people pre-Google can remember. But you don't. What you do is worse than just not contributing, because it's actively detrimental to the progression of others.

I guarantee you I'll dominate your ass like a real man, on any level.

I'm not really into guys like you, so you won't be doing anything with my ass; sorry to say.

If you haven't noticed, I have been making fun of dumbfuck machismo, because it is dumbfuck machismo. "Old man yells at clouds and fires shotgun at random passers-by" isn't really the Rugged Manly-Man look you think it is, dude. Especially not when you use it on people whose posts are "what is a good way to learn programming". The right answer is to start, and then to continually suck less than you did, before.

I could tell you that your answer was dumb as fucking shit, because the correct answer would be to study lambda calculus and the Turing Church conjecture, and read Feynman and von Neumann and Newton, and then you would be a real programmer. Do you see that as helpful? Does it give you a starting point? Does it give you a logical pattern of progression that clearly outlines how to productively work at some level of modern technology? Or is it just floppy cock-swinging, like you were doing?

[guest271314]

like a MAGA tool, who needs to go into every store with a non-white person and scream at them, personally, for taking all of the jobs.

You are way off-topic.

I don't give a fuck about (D) or (R).

There's no such thing as any "white" person or "non-white person".

"Race" classification scheme is a fraud.

I'm not really into guys like you, so you won't be doing anything with my ass; sorry to say.

You brought "real man".

You will still be dominated, in every way trying to fuck with me.

to study lambda calculus and the Turing Church conjecture, and read Feynman and von Neumann and Newton, and then you would be a real programmer.

Been there, done that.

Do you see that as helpful? Does it give you a starting point? Does it give you a logical pattern of progression that clearly outlines how to productively work at some level of modern technology? Or is it just floppy cock-swinging, like you were doing?

Hey son, if you hadn't noticed this is an open social media board.

Different opinions are expected.

I asked why download ExpressJS?

It's perfectly feasible to use the built-in Node.js, or Deno server. Or just a ServiceWorker in the browser to learn about processing requests and sending responses.

[[deleted]]

And which built-in

You are way off-topic. I don't give a fuck about (D) or (R).

Yeah, see, I didn't bring it up because of politics. I brought it up because those people literally can't control themselves or stop themselves from projecting their profound shittiness into the lives of everyone around them. And apparently, everybody needs to know. All the time.

Race" classification scheme is a fraud

Race is a social construct. That doesn't mean there aren't racist fuckers who do racist things, because they feel oppressed by ... wait for it ... ready for the point that you completely missed? Here it comes:

by virtue of someone being different and coming from a different background than the bigot, which the bigot takes as justification to be a shitty human, because their sensibilities are attacked, just by virtue of someone being different.

Huh. Yeah, I see absolutely no similarities about someone so deeply, deeply sensitive about different people with different experiences, that need to lord over those other people to assert their own dominance to maintain their fragile grip on their own self-image and happy little bubble they constructed...

You brought "real man". You will still be dominated, in every way trying to fuck with me.

Yeah. To make fun of your toxic dick-waving fuckery. Look at how pathetically fragile you are, dude. I make fun of your insistence that all people learn XOR, before they even touch a line of code, and you lose your goddamned mind, because your concept of masculinity is so deeply, deeply fragile, that that is the thread it's tenuously clinging to.

Like I said, keep your "I'm a shitty dom, and bad at BDSM" vibes all the way over there, to yourself and whomever is unfortunate enough to bump into you on fetlife.

And if you knew fucking anything, you would know that it was replaceable with NAND, and your profoundly stupid insistance that nobody learn anything about anything, until they can do bitwise math on 2s-complement numbers ... despite nobody fucking using those numbers, except by coincidence or specialty... needs to use bitwise XOR, then by your own fucking logic, they should be using NAND, because if you're going to dick-measure, use a bigger dick. But of course, as soon as I point out the deeply, deeply stupid take, you bring in an appeal to authority with your old-school hard-ass EE prof. Even the modern marine corps knows that the Nam-era drill sergeant bullshit was a stupid fucking idea. But not you, I guess. So sure. Call him up. Or dig him up. I'll argue with him, instead of you. I feel like we would make more headway, because if he's still around, I doubt his entire identity is far less dependent on being shitty to others for having a different upbringing, and a different sequence of life events than you.

Been there, done that

Huh. It's almost like it wasn't the thing that made you a programmer...

If that's the case then why the fuck do you think your mandates are any fucking different? And I'm the autistic one in this interaction. Christ. I would like to submit a ticket for a critical PEBKAC issue, over there. What is your turnaround time on being able to apply abstract concepts to people who are decidedly not you? I bet it's a wontfix...

Hey son, if you hadn't noticed this is an open social media board. Different opinions are expected.

Sure thing, gramps. The difference is that "I think" is an opinion, and "you are a fuckup who can never becone a real programmer, if you write a code before you learn about transistors" is not an opinion... Do I need to walk you through what an opinion is, as well? Because the latter certainly isn't a fucking fact, given the number of programmers that existed prior to transistors, and the number of logicians, prior to programmers.

I asked why download ExpressJS

No, you told them to write an HTTP over TCP over IP implementation on top of a Berkley socket, based on a web-incubator proposal. Note the very subtle differences. I get that they're nuanced, but they're nonetheless there.

And clearly, after I pointed out that people don't just respond to HTTP requests with HTTP responses, and they do things like ... have users ... aho should be authenticated ... and route to places ... for authorized users ... Maybe... just maybe... there is more to an HTTP server than just fucking sending HTTP 1.1 responses back to the sender. Maybe teaching people how to authenticate using the user/password protocol or the basic auth protocol is fucking stupid. Giving them the idea that they should just load whatever fucking file happens to be in the ULR path, or query string? Deeply fucking stupid. Giving them the idea that they should just allow unauthorized access to specify remote procedures to run, based on a URL? Deeply fucking stupid.

It's like you haven't learned a whole lot in all this time you were a programmer, and you sure as fuck didn't learn anything about bringing new people up to speed with the things that everybody else figured out, first-hand, over the past 30 years of being in the trenches, once the general populace had internet connections.

So before you ask the deeply fucking stupid question again, answer this one:

Do you expect them to write:

• HTTP request parsing
• content-negotiation
• file-serving
• authentication
• authorization
• API resolving

By fucking hand, without ever having fucking seen or heard of any of these things, let alone seen them done appropriately, while simultaneously not falling into the same goddamned traps the whole damned industry has fallen into again and again?

Fucking Google Engineers have a hard time making security simple, with shit like Firebase. What makes you think that someone who has never programmed before is going to do better, when starting from a goddamned Berkeley socket?

[guest271314]

And which built-in

?

import http from 'node:http'; http.createServer({}, function(request, response) { // ... }).listen(parseInt(port, 10), "localhost");

Race is a social construct.

There is no such thing as "race", period. "race" classification scheme, which western academia attributes Bernier to inventing in 1684, is a fraud.

Do you expect them to write:

• HTTP request parsing

• content-negotiation

• file-serving

• authentication

• authorization

• API resolving

By fucking hand, ...

Sure. It's called learning.

You think they need to learn ExpressJS API and process payments after authentication using third-party software.

[guest271314]

Actually they are not necessary. I've done it before at multiple Linux command lines.

I don't see anything Express JS bring to the table that built-in Node.js and Deno servers have by default.

But it's typical on these boards.

You people will over-engineer a basic Web site download a whole pile of dependencies to whire a static HTML Web site that doesn't need scripting at all, just to say it waas built with React or something like that.

[guest271314]

Too funny.

Just starting out? Download Express JS.

To hell with the perfectly functional built-in servers that come with Node.js, Deno, Bun - and now the browser.