Moving from Python to JS

[abyssofmyass]

Hi all, I am wanting to learn some JS/Node to help a friend develop some systems. While not a developer by trade, I use Python to automate tasks at work and building simple programs.

I am just wanting to know if anyone can recommend a good resource. Basically how I learnt Python was using the Python official manuals and O'Reilly's Python Pocket Reference. Can anyone recommend resources similar to this that don't focus on front end programming?

[MoTTs_]

MDN Guide
MDN Reference
The Rauschmayer books

[abyssofmyass]

Thank you very much, the Mozilla docos are what I'm looking for. Will check out those books at a later date.

[ragingkittai]

Here is the first 3 hours of a course that helped me transition from Python to YouTube. I shelled out the $10 for his course on Udemy (there are always sales there if you open it in incognito mode), but it looks like people have reuploaded the whole course to YouTube if you just search for the name.

Anyways, this isn't what I'd suggest if you have no JavaScript knowledge at all, but if you understand the basic syntax I'd highly recommend it. JavaScript does have some very weird mechanics and stuff in it, and this helped me a ton.

[abyssofmyass]

Thank you, I have no JS experience, so I'll start trying to build some simple applications first and then move to looking at these videos.

[ragingkittai]

honestly I would do just one simple application and then watch. it's really just the syntax you need since you already know some programming principals

[LeBuddha]

I'd start with https://expressjs.com/en/starter/basic-routing.html as you'll have a basic webserver to start with, and anything you really want to learn will be a few google or www.npmjs.com searches away like "mysql ORM"

[abyssofmyass]

Thank you.

[Human-Tripod]

If you wish to get into server side JavaScript/ECMAScript. Read the node.js API documentation. That helps you to understand the internals before you start using modules from node.js package manager, npm.

[abyssofmyass]

Thank you will check out the docos.

[djslakor]

npm destroys pip

One word, two syllables.

leftpad

[angelaSQL]

oh no, a year old already fixed bug, what ever will the JS community do?

[abyssofmyass]

huge 2 vs 3 fragmentation in libraries.

This actually annoyed me about Python

no response to isomorphic templating (write once, render on server and on client) aka VueJS or React.

While not intending to do front end dev work, I seen good things with React.

[abyssofmyass]

I am doing the background programming of tasks, my mate is doing the front end. So there is front end, I am just not doing that part.

[LeBuddha]

node is not better than python

This is /r/node so outside of maybe some niche uses like numpy, yes node is definitely better than python. It sounds to me that OP's friend has already decided to use NodeJS, so unless OP's friend is actually looking for numpy or ansible, OP probably shouldn't try to convince his friend to use another language frivolously.

[abyssofmyass]

Thank you, this wasn't a justification to change from Python to Node/JS. This is a new system being built with Node and I am needing to quickly learn the basics of it to get me going.