+1 for Greg's comments. Coming from a sql background I found it relatively
easy to jump into c# and .net but my jump to JS wasn't so smooth
On Wed, Aug 26, 2015 at 9:55 AM, Greg Keogh <gfke...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I hope this is my final essay on JavaScript (and so do you!). In summary,
> a few weeks ago I volunteered to write an in-browser script driven demo app
> which is simply a navigation stack of 4 screens. Angular is so currently so
> trendy I spent several hours attempting to learn and use it, but due to
> lack of an IDE, no debugging, no guidance, the custom terse syntax and
> complex dependencies I gave up (then I learn it's being rewritten in
> TypeScript anyway). I've expressed my anger at the 'zoo' of uncoordinated
> and competing JS libraries.
>
> I spent all of yesterday optimistically studying and trying TypeScript, as
> the familiar IDE and structure seemed ideal for someone from a C++/Java/C#
> background. Given my belief that the JS world is really chaotic, my overall
> conclusion is:
>
> *TypeScript is organised chaos.*
>
> I was reminded of moving from C to C++ 20 years ago. C was so freeform you
> could write spaghetti. C++ helped you write object oriented modular
> spaghetti. Just like that, TS is trying to tame the JS spaghetti and make
> it feel OOPish and respectable to people with my background, but it's still
> just putting a wedding gown on a pig.
>
> The good news is though, that once I eventually found guidance on how to
> organise multiple TS source files, how to use module { } like namespaces,
> when to use the <reference>, and why you use --out to concat files, then TS
> is probably the least worst option I've seen so far for writing large JS
> apps. At least you will finish up with organised modular chaos.
>
> So you might be able to tame JS with TS, but we are still stuck with the
> cumbersome DOM and jQuery. While trying to give my web page app behaviour I
> had to have jQuery reference web pages continuously open so I could
> remember the arcane and inconsistent syntax to do the simplest things like
> toggling visibility or setting text or class attributes. This isn't really
> a JS related problem, but I find manipulating the DOM from JS and jQuery
> tedious beyond endurance.
> In fact my endurance is exhausted. I will not write the demo and have
> commissioned someone else to do it. They write this sort of thing for a
> living, so I look forward to learning how they do it. I've learnt a lot in
> recent weeks anyway and have decided that for future work like this I will
> use TS and jQuery because they're the least worst (for now), and the rest
> of the JS ecosystem can go to hell.
>
> *Greg K*
>
