3rd-party contractor came to visit office yesterday, who has "decades" of experience. Conversation came up about JavaScript in one of our products. He says, "Our product doesn't use Java." After an awkward moment with someone who works on the knowledge base nodding in agreement with him, I speak up and delineate the difference between Java and JavaScript.

Later on in the conversation, the same 3rd-party guy followed up with this jewel: "besides, what would anyone even use JavaScript for on the web?"

I proceeded to disable Javascript in my browser and show him.

tl;dr: lasers, dinosaurs, & drums made a guy's head explode

[edit spelling]

https://mod.it/4ygJg6w0

This is an html5 game I am working on that is designed to give people a fun way to learn javascript. Its an RTS where you write the AI for your units in javascript and compete against an enemy AI.

Its very early on and I am just getting started on the game but I was hoping to get some feedback from people who are interested in learning JS so that I can try and make the game more approachable, fun and educational.

The game itself is open source and you can also view and learn from all the game code at the link above or fork it and use it to make your own games.

--EDIT-- If you are interested in progress updates you can follow @castaverhas on twitter, or subscribe to the modit subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/modit/

--EDIT 2 -- Most recent updates: 3 single player levels and leader boards that let you download the code of top scoring players so that you can learn from and improve that code.

--EDIT 3-- Added a 4th campaign level that teaches you how to use vector field based obstacle avoidance.

I find myself doing a lot of small to medium JavaScript / HTML5 / CSS based projects. Right now I'm using Notepad++ to do everything... any recommendations for environments if I want to step up my game a little? Open source preferred...

I fully understand that in order to be a fantastic, brilliant programmer learning about how the computer converts your code and how much memory it takes to process it could be of benefit, but as a beginning programmer, I feel like it is a great waste of my time (for now) to know that the number 114 is made up of 64 bits. I'm feverishly trying to up my skill set so that I can move out of my horrific tech support job and into the world of programming, and in order to maximize my time, is it okay to skip over this or will it haunt me further down the line?

edit: Thank you for all the feedback, insight, and encouragement! I have ordered Professional JavaScript for Web Developers and The Definitive Guide from Amazon. They won't be here for another week, so in the meantime, I am 25 pages into homoiconic's book JavaScript Allonge (a very clever and informative read!) and I'm pressing on :)

I am a (sort-of) desktop application programmer. I write my programs in Python and use Qt as a framework for the GUI (and some other stuff as well).

Recently I decided I wanted to learn another language, and I figured I'd go with C#. This is proving to be a relatively easy task, I found out, being as that most modern languages (particularly OO languages) are quite similar - you learn the syntax, the various classes and their methods, and you're good to go! Well, not really, but still.

My question however is this: is JavaScript the future? Today, I see JS everywhere. Back in my day, it was the annoying thing that slowed down other browsers, but it is very much relevant in today's applications, and I'm talking desktop applications as well. AFAIK, Windows 8 uses JS to power its new start menu. Chrome OS loves JS. You can write anything in JS. I've also decided to learn QtQuick (QML), which also seems to be JavaScript-based.

Do you guys think I should (for now) forgo learning C# and focus on JS? An important thing to note is that I'm strictly a hobby programmer and this has nothing to do with my job.

So im learning front end development as i go along, and i've been asked by some clients to include things like accordian and datepicker UI elements of JQuery. Im really struggling with the code academy exercises and am beginning to ask myself 'do i really need to learn vanilla javascript if everyones using libraries anyway?'. What possible use could vanilla have these days?

Also, should i be doing more than just doing the exercises on code academy? i.e read books on jscript/work on some sort of basic project?

Thanks

Edit : Why downvote? I've been doing front end coding for 2 months now so i really dont know that much. Help a guy out!

Edit 2 : Some great posts here guys. Thanks for you input. In hindsight I maybe should have stated my aspirations ; I dont desire to be a programmer. I don't find writing code for the sake of it fun, HOWEVER, I do get inspired by browsing www.thebestdesigns.com and seeing beautiful websites with such interactivity and fluidity. I want to be able to make visually stunning websites as opposed to soley being a 'programmer' in the traditional sense if you understand. Thanks again.

I don't know how other users of r/javascript feel about this, but I think this should be a forum for discussion of Javascript itself and sharing interesting examples.

Every day new threads hit the top of the page which are just asking for help with, or critique of code. IMO, these kinds of posts belong in a different forum, preferably Stack Overflow, a link to which is posted right over there --->

Am I being a fusspot? How do other people feel about this?

I've been working non-web related projects in python/c++/scheme for 3+ years now, but lately I've wanted to get started on web development. Any advice for javascript?

I am interested in becoming a professional javascript engineer. As someone with programming experience, but no CS degree, what do you recommend I do to learn the intricacies of javascript to the degree required of a javascript engineer?

Like many developers, I'm on a team with a lot of people interested in the back-end. What I've noticed is that tech debt accumulates more quickly in our front-end than anywhere else. It is here that devs seem more likely to let mediocre code slide and have the least expertise. Most of us have read 'Javascript: The Good Parts' and have years of experience writing javascript. The problem is, we've been writing it second-class, and we haven't accumulated the expertise I feel is necessary to write a decent FE component.

I know that's all rather vague, but I hope it gets at the what I'm trying to ascertain. If not, here are some specific questions:

• What practices are critical to writing better javascript?
• At this point in our education, would adopting a framework like backbone.js facilitate or inhibit our growth?
• How have you succeeded in legitimizing javascript at work? How have you failed?

Thank you.

Do you think I'll need to review my algorithms? The title of the position is "Developer Intern", although they work entirely on a Javascript stack (with Node).

They've already presented me with a coding test which I impressed them on.

I'm working on a JavaScript game and it's ballooned into somewhat of a mess. I'm having difficulty organizing the code, separating responsibilities, etc.- basically a whole slew of software engineering problems.

I'm using RequireJS to try and modularize things, and I definitely feel it's helped. I came close to throwing another library at the solution (backbone.js) but I'm hesitating because I don't know that more libraries will really help things. And on the one hand maybe it's not TOO messy, I mean, I can certainly keep adding features and won't have trouble figuring out how to get them working. But I'm only at a reasonably early prototype stage, and I'm concerned that at some point I'm going to be buried in the equivalent of spaghetti code and give up on this project, and I really don't want that to happen.

Any suggestions on how to get this project better organized? Tips on how to divide up the code? Open source examples that I can look at as examples? I'd really appreciate any help here.

Background: 10 years web development (PHP).

I know enough javascript to use third party scripts, and I understand the syntax, but I don't understand the nesting of functions and was hoping for some sort of javascript resource like php.net, but I have not found one. I've gotten a book on Javascript, but it was a cookbook (not what I thought it would be).

Please list any good resources. I could use some help.

So I've read through a few JavaScript tutorials and read a book/skimmed another. I'm at the point where I'm bored with reading and want to move on.

The trouble is that I'm not sure I'm at the point where I can dive in and start coding from scratch, but I don't know where to go from here. I've started learning jQuery (not sure how I feel about it yet) and eventually want to learn backbone.js, underscore.js, jasmine and CoffeeScript, etc.

People have suggested I contribute to an open source project and help with bugs but I feel like that's totally out of my league. Others have suggested I start on a side project, but I don't know where to start.

I don't want to/can't learn too much at once because I get completely overloaded which makes me frustrated and I get nothing accomplished.

I eventually want to get some sort of front-end job (I'm totally proficient in HTML/CSS), so where should I go from here?

As per the title, for as far as I can remember, all browsers that can interpre javascipt, including FF, accepts:

javascript:_some javascript code_ 

But it does not seem to work on the newer versions of FireFox, in version 6 and 7, it no longer works.

Any reason?

Thanks.

I hope you guys don't get this a lot. Currently I'm using Dreamweaver code mode, but there's got to be a better tool out there for OO Javascript right?

Edit: Thanks for the advice guys, I'm going to give a couple of these a shot.

Also, I was going to ask for some up-votes, so that this would be more prominent on /r/javascript, but then I remembered it was /r/javascript. 2 is enough.

I love Javascript. I find it incredibly easy to compose tiny contained blocks of functionality that communicate over tightly defined interfaces into extremely maintainable software. You can do so much with so little. You?

I'm making it a goal of mine to master JavaScript and was hoping someone else had done the same and wouldn't mind sharing their regime.

EDIT: ** **I've created a new post to host all the references from this post. Find it here.

EDIT: Thanks guys. I've compiled a list of references mentioned here. I appreciate all your contributions.

1. Anything written by Douglas Crockford. This includes: JavaScript: The Good Parts and YUI Theater
2. Read other people's code, jQuery source, Node's source, etc.
3. Understand JavaScript before becoming dependent on libraries (eg. jQuery, Prototype).
4. Addy Osmani's Javascript 101 audio course
5. Build Things - "think of something cool, and try and build it."
6. Participate at StackOverflow.

7. References -o- plenty: Gecko DOM Reference, HTML and DHTML Reference, Yahoo! YUI Theater, w3schools.com HTML DOM Tutorial, Annotated ECMAScript 5.1, JavaScript, JavaScript Blog

8. And finally, Lord loves a working' man, don't trust whitey, and see a doctor and get rid of it.

I get that this subreddit is for all things javascript, and I completely understand if this gets downvoted to oblivion, but I need to say my piece.

I am not a node.js developer, I doubt I ever will be a node.js developer. I appreciate the project, I understand why it is significant and I am glad it exists and is being worked on, but I have absolutely no interest in the project. I subscribe to this subreddit because I am interested in client side JS and what people are doing with JS in the browser, and it's really annoying to click on a link that sounds really awesome only to find out it's yet another Node project.

I imagine that if I feel this way, there surely must be others that feel the same; so on behalf of all of us, could you please tag Node.js related posts with [Node] in the title?

Venting here. I'm sick of hearing that Javascript is a bad language. It's not perfect (what language is?) but it is quick and easy to write clean, flexible and reusable code. It's extremely well documented. It has some sweet debugging tools (these days). I love the powerful dynamic nature of it, and the event driven programming that it enables. Occasionally I sit down with people that "used to do some Javascript back in the day", people who were left with a bad taste in their mouth. Together we (ok, mostly me) hash out some clean, concise, and readable Javascript... and I laugh as they slowly realize that they don't know as much about it as they thought they did.

I love Javascript. It's the web browsers that I usually have issues with.

If you are not using a library, such as jQuery, for all your javascript, in 2010, are you doing it wrong?

I tend to fall back on a library when I want to either get it done quickly or am just messing around with an idea. I am curious as to what the /r/javascript community thinks.

This little bugger sends ajax postbacks every time I select words on a site I visit (that uses this script):

http://tcr.tynt.com/javascripts/Tracer.js

Maybe I'm in the minority here (although I know others), but when I read documents, I select the text I'm reading. This javascript will then happily send thousands of micro-posts to this tracking company containing the words that I selected.

I've seen it on lots of sites recently and it's bugging me! My browser flips into the 'loading' state each time I do it.

Adblock works well as a deterrent, but I'm sure there is more than one company doing this

I was at the karma party last night. There's this javascript code that you can put in your address bar and hit enter to automatically upvote everyone on the page. I'm wondering if someone could explain to me how it works.

There are actually two versions out there. The first one doesn't work and it looks like this:
javascript:$("up").click()()

It probably doesn't work because the events get fired too fast. After all, if you're upvoting someone, the request has to get processed and logged by reddit -- if you're sending five hundred of these requests instantaneously, reddit will choke and you'll be lucky if even one of those requests goes through.

The second version, which does work because it pauses for a second between each event, looks like this:

javascript:(function f(){var u=$(".up");if(u.length-1){setTimeout(f,1000);u[1].onclick()} })()

I'm wondering if someone could explain to me how this works? I'm not too familiar with javascript, although I do a lot of python and C++ programming.

If I could "step" through this function, where would the execution path take me? In my eyes, this creates and calls a function called f. The body of this function is:

var u=$(".up"); if(u.length-1){ setTimeout(f,1000); u[1].onclick() } 

After the first line, which is a jQuery statement, "u" will contain 500 (or however many user comments there are on the page) instances of the up arrow link, one for each comment. The condition in the if statement confuses me -- why minus one? And why have it at all? Then, with the setTimeout function, I am led to believe that the function f calls itself after a 1 second delay. But because the body of the function is exactly the same, I'm confused as to why this doesn't create an "infinite loop" of sorts -- wouldn't f just keep calling itself repeatedly with the exact same results? After the setTimeout statement, we immediately move on to clicking on the second up arrow -- I'm assuming this is because we skip the original submission and only upvote the comments. I'm confused about how we ever manage to move past the first comment if "f" keeps calling itself.

In short, I'm extremely confused but very curious about how this works. If anyone could explain this to me, I'd be very grateful.

Based on what I've seen today, here's what went down.

Reddit user Empirical (who has since been banned) wrote JavaScript code (as seen here) where if you copied and pasted it into the address bar, you would instantly spam that comment by replying to all the comments on the page and submitting it.

Later xssfinder posted a proof of concept where if you hovered over a link, it would automatically run a JS script.

He then got the brilliant idea to combine the two scripts together, and tested it here, and it spread like wildfire from there. He didn't know how nasty it was until it was too late.

Someone else can expand on this by explaining the technical aspects, but that's how it all went down.

In xssfinder's defense though, he was very apologetic for what happened, and was trying to help in reversing what he did.

EDIT: It looks like everything's fixed now. The worm links now seem to be disabled. To be on the safe side, disable Javascript in your browser.