Path: csiph.com!news.mixmin.net!weretis.net!feeder1.news.weretis.net!news.solani.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn Newsgroups: comp.lang.javascript Subject: Re: n00b considering Java Script Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2016 18:23:44 +0200 Organization: PointedEars Software (PES) Lines: 121 Message-ID: <7235541.NyiUUSuA9g@PointedEars.de> References: Reply-To: Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8Bit X-Trace: solani.org 1474820625 2507 eJwNycEBwCAIA8CVgJDoOhVk/xHsfY+Qq1aKSg4HHX0rkZ8PVsQ9sENt7BNW+gfrmlMcj5l+FaIQvw== (25 Sep 2016 16:23:45 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@news.solani.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2016 16:23:45 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: KNode/4.14.2 X-User-ID: eJwNycEBwCAIA8CVEEiw42gh+4/Q3vcQXHwrCSYE3dDj8pDNvn9BYxaqIbe1Tt71zGUU7PhUqzHHnULvLO8PW7sVzA== Cancel-Lock: sha1:zEKiRQCVsZyJrSuFGJNUE8x0ZMc= X-NNTP-Posting-Host: eJwFwYEBACAEBMCVKP8yjsT+I3SHTWW5ETQM5pSB6iIxGcJdtd7pCd6bzJjX8nx1KKqlOj8bkxHH Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.javascript:31452 WaltS wrote: ^^^^^ This is Usenet. Your “From” header field value should contain your *real* name. > On 09/25/2016 10:09 AM, Marek Novotny wrote: >> I know absolutely NOTHING about Java Script. If I wanted to get started >> learning on some n00b basic level would there be a book or online course >> you'd recommend? >> > > > I've started learning JavaScript using Beginning JavaScript 5th Edition, > several times. > > Page 1: | 1 Introduction to JavaScript and the Web | | […] | JavaScript is an interpreted language rather than a compiled language. Wrong. | What is meant by the terms “interpreted” and “compiled”? | Well, to let you in on a secret, your computer doesn’t really understand | JavaScript at all. It needs something to interpret the JavaScript code and | convert it into something that it understands; hence it is an interpreted | language. Computers understand only machine code, which is essentially a | string of binary numbers (that is, a string of zeros and ones). As the | browser goes through the JavaScript, it passes it to a special program | called an interpreter, which converts the JavaScript to the machine | code your computer understands. No, it does not. Instead, source code is passed to a software component called a script engine, by which it is compiled (just-in-time) to bytecode to be executed by a platform-independent virtual machine (e.g. by Mozilla SpiderMonkey) or to machine-specific code (e.g., by Google V8). Page 2: | What is JavaScript? | […] | In 1997, JavaScript was standardized by Ecma International, a membership‐ | based non‐profit organization, and renamed to ECMAScript. Wrong. “ECMAScript is based on several originating technologies, the most well-known being JavaScript (Netscape) and JScript (Microsoft).” (This true sentence can be found in *every* Edition of the ECMAScript Language Specification.) | JavaScript support among today’s browsers is certainly more unifi ed than | it has ever been, but as you see in future chapters, developers still have | to cope with older, and in many cases non‐standard, JavaScript | implementations. Wrong. Those programming languages are not “JavaScript implementations”, but _ECMAScript_ implementations, and *the standard allows conforming implementations extensions to the language*: ‘2 Conformance A conforming implementation of ECMAScript may provide additional types, values, objects, properties, and functions beyond those described in this specification. In particular, a conforming implementation of ECMAScript may provide properties not described in this specification, and values for those properties, for objects that are described in this specification. A conforming implementation of ECMAScript may support program and regular expression syntax not described in this specification. In particular, a conforming implementation of ECMAScript may support program syntax that makes use of the “future reserved words” listed in subclause 11.6.2.2 of this specification.’ (to be found in *every* Edition of the ECMAScript Language Specification) Page 3: | JavaScript and the Web | | […] | The organization that sets the standards for web pages is the World Wide | Web Consortium (W3C). It not only sets standards for HTML and CSS, but | also for how JavaScript interacts with web pages inside a web browser. Utter nonsense. The W3C specifies the Document Object Model (DOM), a standard of *language-independent* interfaces for interacting with documents written in markup languages like HTML, which are the primary focus of the W3C. ECMAScript implementations like JavaScript, among other programming languages, can then be used to access implementations of those interfaces and interact with DOM objects. Those are only the first three pages of that book and they are already full of common misconceptions about “JavaScript”. From that, I doubt that the author(s) have the slightest idea what they are talking about. I strongly recommend against reading this book, much less buying it. The amount of nonsense you will have to unlearn after reading it will be greater than what you can learn correctly elsewhere, including this newsgroup. Read its FAQ instead; alas, it is not up-to-date either, but still better than this book because the latter was written by *professionals* who make a living by using the language(s) every day; not by some wannabe author/publishing house who wants to make a quick buck and a name for themselves by writing down/publishing hearsay and their purely theoretical understanding/misconceptions of the topic. BTW: -- PointedEars FAQ: | SVN: Twitter: @PointedEars2 | ES Matrix: Please do not cc me. / Bitte keine Kopien per E-Mail.