How Much JavaScript Do You Need To Know For an Entry-Level Job? 293
Nerval's Lobster writes: JavaScript is a programming language that's easy to pick up, but extremely difficult to master. Even some of its beginner-level functions are decidedly not beginner-friendly. When someone lands their first JavaScript job, they're going to want to know as much as possible, if only so they can navigate through some of the language's trickier aspects without needing to ask for help. Developer Jeff Cogswell picked through JavaScript and came away with a couple of lists of what he thought were the minimum baseline of skills for JavaScript use in a work context. That list included understanding how to use built-in objects, functions , closures, and DOM (Document Object Model). While his points are comprehensive, not everyone will necessarily agree with what he lists (and doesn't list).
Entry level job? (Score:4, Insightful)
There are no entry level jobs. Not for Americans at least.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You just need to read one book. [oreilly.com]
Read it cover to cover a couple times, and if that doesn't get you a job, at least you can kill someone by dropping the book out of a third story city window.
Crockford's JavaScript: The Good Parts (Score:5, Interesting)
You just need to read [JavaScript: The Definitive Guide].
Read it cover to cover a couple times
Why not just read the good parts [oreilly.com]? Bonus: knowing the good parts of JavaScript may help you tame the fractal that is PHP as well.
Re: (Score:2)
Crockford himself said "I have reviewed dozens of JavaScript books, and I can only recommend one: JavaScript: The Definitive Guide (5th Edition) by David Flanagan."
But anyways, you can study the language all you want-- it won't help you get a job that requires experience with jQuery, Angular, EmberJS, node, or any of the millions of other JS frameworks and tools in use out there.
Your only hope is that you get hired by a boss who's savvy enough to let you learn on the job whatever specific JS mess(es) they'r
Re:Crockford's JavaScript: The Good Parts (Score:4, Informative)
Why not just read the good parts
Because that's not really a Javascript guide, but rather a concept of how to use Javascript once you already know it. If that's the only book you have, then you'll be missing a lot of Javascript.
Which is not to disparage the book, it's an excellent book.
Re:Crockford's JavaScript: The Good Parts (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that whilst Crockford will teach you to write good JavaScript, as often as not you have to wade through and understand the crappy JavaScript that has been written by someone who hasn't read that book, or any others from all appearances. And then to top it off, the sick bastard has minified and/or obfuscified the fuck out of it.
Re:Entry level job? (Score:4, Insightful)
You should apply for Indian citizenship; it'll make getting a job in the US much easier than having a US citizenship.
Re: (Score:2)
There are no entry level jobs. Not for Americans at least.
Elitist and racist comments that trigger the like reflexes pretty much everyone on slashdot right?
Buy American! Be American! lol
I see "Entry level" programers float in from the local community college every other day. They usually can't figure out how to use our vending machine, much less write a line of code. The people from India/Pakistan show up and just get shit done. They also bring awesome stuff to our pot lucks.
The problem isn't H1B visas. The problem is the rub stamp educational standards colleges h
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
There are no entry level jobs. Not for Americans at least.
Elitist and racist comments that trigger the like reflexes pretty much everyone on slashdot right?
Buy American! Be American! lol
I see "Entry level" programers float in from the local community college every other day. They usually can't figure out how to use our vending machine, much less write a line of code. The people from India/Pakistan show up and just get shit done. They also bring awesome stuff to our pot lucks.
The problem isn't H1B visas. The problem is the rub stamp educational standards colleges have in this country and completely destroyed employers faith in what a US degree means.
No the problem is that you don't understand what entry level means. Someone fresh out of college should only be
expected to have a very basic understanding of a programming language. You will have to train someone for an entry level job.
If you're expecting them to walk in the door and work without training, then it's not an entry level job.
You're part of the problem in that you're hiring experienced developers from India and claiming you're filling entry level jobs.
The net effect of this is lowering wages
Re: (Score:2)
American is a nationality. Indian is a nationality. Pakistani is a nationality.
We're clearly talking about nationality here. So why the fuck do you bring race into this discussion?
Because nationalities are often used as proxies for race. African American is a term that is more of a nationality, such as Asian. What it really means is negroid or congroid. But very few people are asinine enough to complain about definitions when their is a claim about racism against African Americans. Well, you probably would, based on your post here.
bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
> JavaScript is a programming language that's easy to pick up
this statement is the single biggest source of damage to the ecosystem of javascript.
Re:bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been programming professionally since the 1970s. I cut my teeth on COBOL, ALGOL, FORTRAN, and PL/I. Then I did years of Ada, a few months of Smalltalk, some Modula-2, and years of C and C++. I very briefly used Objective-C on actual NeXT systems. Then came a decade of Java, with some Delphi, VB and Perl. That was followed by some time with PHP, Ruby and JavaScript. Of all of those languages, JavaScript was the hardest to learn, and even after using it for years, it is the hardest to use. It's just so fucking awful, and I've worked with some pretty awful languages in the past. So much of it is just plain dumb. It's the kind of dumb that just shouldn't happen. It's the kind of dumb that shouldn't be allowed to exist 20 years on, even if it was first introduced during a rushed release! What's dumber is when people defend the dumbness as if it's some kind of a feature or a benefit. It's neither of those. It's just dumbness gone wild. It's fucking idiotic that it has taken over 20 years for JavaScript to get something that barely resembles a usable form of object orientation. It's stupid that its standard library is so terribly lacking, and what is there is mighty shitty. It's beyond belief how bad its type system is, and how awful its automatic type conversions are. Something is really fucking wrong when a so-called 'modern' language is worse than the ones developed 20 or 30 years prior to it, back when programming language design was in its infancy. That's right: the people who developed the earliest programming languages managed to do a much better job at it than those who have created JavaScript, decades later. In the 1980s and 1990s, I never though I'd be dealing with a programming language as shitty as JavaScript, especially so far into the future. We could have done great things, yet now we're saddled with the worst programming language around.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
. It's fucking idiotic that it has taken over 20 years for JavaScript to get something that barely resembles a usable form of object orientation.
You're doing it wrong. Classes were an ugly kludge from the beginning -- they benefit compilers far more than developers. JS's approach to objects is superior in just about every conceivable way.
You bought in to a bit too much of the OO propaganda in the 90's.
Really, the greatest thing about JavaScript is that you're very unlikely to run across ridiculous things like an "abstract factory factory".
Re:bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
Instead, you run across every JavaScript developer trying their best to fake class OO using prototypes. Each one uses an approach that's different from every other developer, and each has its own set of serious limitations. Worst of all, none of them are compatible with each other.
Languages that compile down to JavaScript, such as CoffeeScript, TypeScript, and Dart, are so popular because they add real class OO. Hell, even ECMAScript 6 is adding real class OO. Classes, not prototypes, are the only practical tool. Prototypes are a detriment; they are a sham.
Re: (Score:2)
There's a nice paper from the developers of the Apple Newton, which argues that class-based OO maps very well to model objects (where you have lots of objects that are mostly the same), whereas prototype-based OO is a better fit for views, where you want a bit of customisation for almost every instance. JavaScript is a language that is designed for UIs, with the back end being written in some other language, so it's hardly a surprise that it chose prototypes.
My biggest complaint about JavaScript is that,
Re: (Score:2)
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I actually really like the prototype system, it makes introspection (also know as reflection) really easy. Surely class based has its advantages and I actually believe that could exist in a single system and be used where it is more appropriate. In my opinion once you start getting too big class hierarchies you should start using mixins and prototype based OO.
Re: (Score:2)
I actually really like the prototype system, it makes introspection (also know as reflection) really easy. Surely class based has its advantages and I actually believe that could exist in a single system and be used where it is more appropriate. In my opinion once you start getting too big class hierarchies you should start using mixins and prototype based OO.
The only part of introspection that's easy is to figure out if a function is defined immediately on a class instance via `hasOwnProperty.` Everything else is very difficult.
For example, to build their dependency injection system AngularJS actually converts functions to source via `toString` then runs a regex on that to parse the count and names of function parameters so they can figure out what params to pass. This works (mostly, there are problems with minified code) but is a hack that pushes what should b
Re: (Score:2)
That is a good point you make, but I myself never needed to introspect method fields. Does the way that Angular does it take into account arguments used through the arguments object? Like:
function() {
console.log(arguments[0] + ": " + arguments[1]);
}
My guess is that that is the reason they did not include method field introspection. In retrospect the way that java handles multiple parameters is better, you have to actually set on the method signature that your method can receive
Re: (Score:2)
Given that the languages that use classes were generally desiged properly by a team of engineers, and the ones that don't were usually designed by one guy calling people who like class based languages "idiots" is rather a pot and kettle scenario. Prototype based OO is inefficient, ugly, difficult to debug for any large scale object system and generally just a dumb dumb way to describe objects.
Re:bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
And of course no JS IDE is remotely as forgiving or useful as it might be because there is no way at compile time to figure out what an object *is* beyond some simple inferences.
This is the reason the likes of Typescript, GWT and other JS generators exist at all. Javascript is treated as the problem to solve. e.g. Typescript extends JS with modules, classes, interfaces, typechecking and so on. The compiler can use those to catch errors at compile time instead of runtime and it can emit functionally equivalent JS. Stuff that allows an IDE to construct an AST and offer refactoring, method signatures and other useful functionality they've enjoyed for years in other languages. It even a specialised function where "this" behaves in a sane way. On the whole, programming Typescript is a lot more pleasant than JS but it's still a thin veneer.
Minified JavaScript (Score:3, Interesting)
Pick a mainstream web page as an example of visually ugly [JavaScript] code! They're everywhere!
That's because mainstream web sites have minified their scripts [wikipedia.org]. This process removes blank space and shortens variable names in order to pass fewer bytes over the wire.
Re: Minified JavaScript (Score:2)
.min.js.gz smaller than .js.gz (Score:2)
The minified JavaScript file is smaller than the corresponding file before minification even after both are gzip compressed.
Re: (Score:2)
Without a backend database, how does a site accept reader comments? Without client-side scripting, how does the site know when to send a particular image so as not to waste the server's and client's valuable data transfer quota on sending photos and illustrations that the user will end up not viewing?
crap code is who's fault? (Score:2)
I have seen shit code in every language I have worked with. Starting with Cobol and Fortran, then to Pascal, C, Perl, Python, and various *SH. The language is not the reason for the shit code, it's the programmer.
Want to read some great JS, go get a WordPress rootkit. JS is used to it's fullest in those (no I don't use them, I spent years learning how to hunt them down). PAC files are another area that usually has well written JS, and plenty of examples exist.
Re:bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
AMEN! The "best" part about Javascript is that if you don't use that stupid HACK:
"use strict";
at the beginning of your .js file it will behave _worse_ then shitty BASIC. Didn't we learn _anything_ about using variable without declaring them??
"Javascript: 10 days for the designer, 10 years of frustrations for users"
* http://www.computer.org/csdl/m... [computer.org]
PHP is another fucking retarded language.
Why the hell does the internet run on 2 of the shittiest languages ever half-assed designed??
> What's dumber is when people defend the dumbness as if it's some kind of a feature or a benefit.
You're talking about automatic-semi-colon insertion aren't ?
Someone needs to be taken out back and shot for all the pain and suffering that bullshit "feature" has caused.
Re: (Score:2)
Convenience.
http://blog.samuellevy.com/pos... [samuellevy.com]
Step 1 in getting a website going is apparently easier for newbies with PHP than with something with all the security and extra features with almost anything else. Step 2 wiht PHP is buggy spaghetti, but it puts stuff on screens.
Re: (Score:2)
> Why the hell does the internet run on 2 of the shittiest languages ever half-assed designed??
What design ?
Really, Javascript was created in 10 days by 1 man without talking to anybody else.
He had been thinking about how to go about creating a programming language so he had a lot of ideas, but Netscape wanted him to create a different kind of language so basically in 10 days he did what he was asked to do but included some the ideas he had about creating a language inspired by Scheme- and Self.
Re: (Score:2)
> What design ?
Haha, Touche !
Re: (Score:2)
Why the hell does the internet run on 2 of the shittiest languages ever half-assed designed??
Because web development was not taken seriously in the early days, so people with no clue just used whatever seemed popular at the time or half-arsed something together (Personal Home Page). Like early web browsers and TCP/IP stacks things like security and clean implementation were not really thought about.
Now we are stuck with them. People look the crapfest that is Javascript, kinda made it workable and then turbo-charged the hell out of the interpreters. Plug-ins are frowned upon and nothing else can get
Wait, what? (Score:2)
Your complaint is that a script language is not Object Oriented enough? Are you the same guy who complains about Perl and Python not being Semaphore ready? It's a scripting language! Scripting languages are not really intended to be object oriented, they are intended for task management with pragmatic functionality. JS has about the same Object Orientedness of Python or Bash. You can use those scripting languages for some pretty complex stuff and define all the functions you want. You have a massive
Re: (Score:2)
It's a scripting language! Scripting languages are not really intended to be object oriented
And yet Python, Perl, Ruby, Groovy, Scala and countless other scripting languages manage a better job than Javascript.
Being a "scripting language" is not an excuse. Nor should there be a hard distinction between "scripting language" and "programming language" these days at all.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
congrats, YOU are poster example of being both, the victim and the culprit of javascript's reputation of "kiddie language".
news flash, its not. it has good parts and bad parts. same as any other language. in some ways its crappy and dumb. in some ways its pretty ingenious.
here's the trick: use the good parts. don't use the bad parts. actually learning the language helps do that.
the alternative is bitching about the hammer that its poor at driving screws. which is basically what you're doing.
thumbs up on the
Re: (Score:2)
...It's just so fucking awful, and I've worked with some pretty awful languages in the past...
Yep. Writing a short script here and there was what it was designed for. For large scale application development and maintenance? I can think of few worse.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes. God yes. It's a disaster. Sometimes waiting to happen, sometimes unfolding right in front of your eyes. Thank you for your comment.
Re: (Score:2)
> a consistent type system
Mwuahaha. I was following you until you said that. With JS you get stupid automatic silent conversions that are the source of hidden bugs. And just to drive the point home (JS starts @ 1:22 )
* https://www.destroyallsoftware... [destroyallsoftware.com]
Javascript's == operator is fundamentally broken as this chart shows:
* http://dorey.github.io/JavaScr... [github.io]
When even Douglass Crockford, who wrote the excellent "Javascript: The good parts" says @34:31 "Why am I betting my life on this piece of crap" in thi
Re: (Score:2)
Node is DRY: Don't Repeat Yourself (Score:2)
The biggest problem with it are the twits who are using [ECMAScript] on the server
Without using the same language on the server and client, and without repeating yourself [wikipedia.org], how else are you supposed to have both client and server perform the same input validation logic?
Re:Node is DRY: Don't Repeat Yourself (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Java, and GWT(The java to javascript compiler) is the best solution for that. problem.
Ahh Dice (Score:5, Funny)
Last week it was "How much C++ do you need to know for an entry level job"
next week it'll be "How much Python do you need for an entry level job"
Must be nice crowd sourcing your job requirements from Slashdot.
Re:Ahh Dice (Score:5, Insightful)
Followed by,
"I know all the languages; what else do I need to get an entry level job. Any job. I haven't worked in years -- I'm desperate! Please!"
High unemployment has a terrible social cost.
Re: (Score:2)
How much Dice do you need to get an entry level job?
Re: (Score:2)
How much Dice do you need to get an entry level job?
More than exists right now apparently. I've never gotten a job through Dice, though I have tried at several points in the past.
Hard To Say (Score:2)
For a number of websites that I visit routinely, I disable javascript - too much overload. If you want to work for those websites, I will ignore you. Learn to code clean html without javascript - much better.
When detail levels vary by screen size (Score:2)
Say you're designing the front page of a news or blog site. You want anonymous visitors on small "mobile" screens to see a list of headlines, but you want anonymous visitors on larger "desktop" screens to see headlines and a one-sentence summary of an article. Anonymous Coward says script is better than User-agent sniffing [slashdot.org]. How would you implement sending only headlines for mobile and headlines plus first sentence for desktop?
Re: (Score:2)
CSS Media queries in this context just mean you have to download all the data anyway, and then selectively hide bits. Not an ideal solution is it?
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I disable javascript
Create a small collection of elements that are shown/hidden by the same media queries that control the mobile/desktop display mode for your site, get the computed CSS visibility of these elements, make decision on what to load.
How do the server "get the computed CSS visibility of these elements" without running a script on the client?
Re: (Score:2)
The rest of us prefer a functional web, not something that looks like it belongs in 1995.
Re:Hard To Say (Score:4, Interesting)
No trolling, and even though you post as AC, you raise a good point. Slashdot is not functional without Javascript enabled, and so that is how I read it. Nevertheless, it is teetering on the edge of becoming unusable. The moment it crosses the threshold, I will stop reading it. There are many websites that I used to visit (some hosting content by very good writers) but the Javascript jockeys have turned them to mush. The submitter seems to aspire to becoming one of those jockeys. What do I know? I'm just one person - a tiny mote in webserver logs. Whether I am a canary ...
[Way OT - I just used the Post button. What's quick reply?]
Re:Hard To Say (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
For example, class names that are hyphen separated in CSS are camelCased in the DOM. WTF???
Reply to This, without script (Score:5, Informative)
Open the "Reply to This" link in a new tab and you'll get the no-JS version of the comment composition form, which I'm using to enter this very comment.
Great minds think alike .. (Score:2)
Great minds think alike ...
Wrote this [soylentnews.org] yesterday on the other site ...
125 years of experience (Score:4, Insightful)
also 90 years of experience with Windows 10.
Expert knowledge of tomorrow's framework (Score:5, Funny)
While Angular and React might be all the rage today, you're expected to be an expert in whatever framework comes out tomorrow.
You should be able to write the same Todo List application several thousand times, justifying the existence of each one.
You should also demonstrate a strong desire to re-implement every single piece of software in existence in Javascript, including Linux (http://bellard.org/jslinux/), 8bit Console Emulators (https://fir.sh/projects/jsnes/), and possibly the software that drives your Kuerig. For example, I would expect you to tell me that you're just dying to start a new github project where you'll re-implement MS Flight Simulator 10 in Javascript, and how awesome the cockpit checklist feature will be.
You must demonstrate a complete misunderstanding of the differences between asynchronous and concurrent, and you must also be able to give a short presentation on what "web scale" means, without being able to explain it. You'll probably win a few favors by throwing in the term "cloud".
This and more, is what it takes to be a 21st century javascript developer.
None (Score:2)
Real programmers use C and provide the foundation that web kiddies rely on to get anything done.
Now get off my lawn.
C deployment is more difficult (Score:2)
So how do you deploy your client-side C code to 14 different client platforms? Consider that some of these platforms have onerous developer qualifications designed to discriminate against startups, a devkit fee of thousands of dollars, and final veto power over apps. I guess perhaps you could use Emscripten to, well, compile your C into JavaScript.
Sony v. Hotz (Score:2)
So how do you deploy your client-side C code to 14 different client platforms? Consider that some of these platforms [are controlled by an entity with] final veto power over apps
Package it using an exploit kit ;-)
We saw how badly that went for George Hotz.
Re: (Score:2)
Automake doesn't help when you're trying to deploy to platforms A. which don't all support the same libraries for presenting a user interface, or B. whose executable packaging process requires a code signing certificate that is expensive to obtain. Good luck porting, say, a Qt app to the PlayStation Vita.
Blinders (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Blinders (Score:4, Interesting)
I wholeheartedly agree.
1) You mostly do not want to manipulate the dom directly. Use templates/css to do as much as possible (so your designer has the freedom to fiddle with it).
2) List most object based languages, you do not want to actually focus on creating/extending a bunch of objects.
Your goal is to map the data from the server (most likely JSON) into something the View can use (most likely related to your choice of template technology).
Since you likely have multiple views using the same data, you may need to store it in a model to be handed to each of them or transformed on demand.
So know JSON. Know data structures, (arrays, objects, maps, sets). Know how to bind functions. Understand scoping. Then know how to hook into templates.
Also, for the sake of anyone who may work with your code in the future, learn a unit test framework. Use it. Understand the difference between unit and system tests and favor unit tests.
Re: (Score:2)
I read that as, "know knockout or some other templating library". Because are you going to write your own?
And then you have to learn the library. Or the custom implementation. So you haven't answered what someone needs to know in that situation.
A few major topics (Score:2)
A few months working with jQuery.... Events.... DOM on realistic websites, some fiddling with Prototype.js, and you'll be fine.
Thas' assuming you know programming in general, and not just Javascript, and had time to learn Javascript's language quirks, such as functions, variables, conditionals, ===, strings, integers, dates, custom objects, and basic structures.
Learning it now (Score:5, Interesting)
Most of my career has been bumbling along doing systems programming in c, perl, python, and lately c# writing a lot of console apps/utilities. Unfortunately, everyone now wants web developers and the like, so I find myself in the unenviable position of playing "catch up" and facing the possibility of having to return to a jr. role due to "lack of experience", but I'm not so proud to do these things if it gives me a steady paycheck with room for advancement... I digress...
I'm going through Eloquent Javascript at the moment with a look towards the SImpson "You don't know" series to get a little more in-depth in some of the areas that I see people having issues with.. followed by working with node and angular (basically, the MEAN stack). I don't know where this would put me vs "beginners", but it's the route I'm headed down.. :P
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Most of my career has been bumbling along doing systems programming in c, perl, python, and lately c# writing a lot of console apps/utilities. Unfortunately, everyone now wants web developers and the like
If you know SQL, then you can easily call yourself a backend developer with that skillset. No need to learn anything more.
STFU Dice (Score:4, Insightful)
STFU already Dice. We won't fall for your click bait articles.
If I'm hiring the minimum you need to know... (Score:4, Informative)
If you want an entry level programming job and don't have any experience, you'd had better made something non-trivial on your own time that you can show in an interview and explain the code. If I'm skimming your code and I see you picked a certain data structure or implemented a algorithm when there is more than one way to do it, you should be able to explain your reasoning for coding it the way you did. Also make sure you learn at least the basics of one of the popular frameworks and use it in your demo.
So make a Javascript web app, or something on the server side with a free or low cost hosting account. Make it functional, make it as bug proof as you can, make the code clean and easy to read, and be prepared to show it to a skeptical audience. Think of your interview as an audition and your code as the music you're going to play.
If you can't make something to show, you don't know enough Javascript yet.
Re: (Score:2)
Bingo. I'd add that what you create should be neither trivial nor Baroque.
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Technical skills or development skills? (Score:4)
It's interesting to me to compare Cogswell's post to Matt Briggs' one on the role of senior developers here. http://mattbriggs.net/blog/201... [mattbriggs.net]
It seems to me that Briggs has the right of things; the skills that bring real value to development efforts are less connected with specific language functions or quirks and more associated with understanding how to develop software projects.
jQuery is not JavaScript (Score:2)
Stop trying to say that it is. It happens with Node, Angular, and other stuff to a lesser extent, but jQuery seems to be the de facto JS gap-filler that everyone insists is part of core JS skills.
But even worse are the feckless noobs who say they don't know JS, but know jQuery instead. That's like saying "I don't know English, but I know its verbs."
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There is no core to Javascript. (Score:4, Informative)
I've been working in JS for years and there is no such thing as some "minimal amount" you need to know; the language and the DOM are just too fucking disorganized and sprawling. The syntax is garbage and constantly evolving, who can remember the differences between innerText and textContent? Then there are the platform specific inconsistencies: event handlers or Ajax requests are maddening without external libraries. Then there is the pseudo-standard tooling for which there is always 2+ competing solutions: NPM and Bower for asset management, CommonJS and AMD and WebPack for packaging, Gulp and Grunt for builds, Closure Compiler and Uglify for minimization/compiling ... it's maddening!
Trying to keep even a fraction of that in your head is impossible. If an employer wanted me to do an intense coding session without Google, I would laugh and just walk out of the interview.
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NPM and Bower for asset management, CommonJS and AMD and WebPack for packaging, Gulp and Grunt for builds, Closure Compiler and Uglify for minimization/compilin
As opposed to Maven/Gardle, JAR vs WAR vs EAR? Really building a project is hard in any language, there is a reason many companies have people dedicated to it. Personally Gulp is panacea after dealing with Maven...
Don't study, write (Score:2)
Write a shopping list app. If you have a significant other, you'll be a hero, and besides todo apps are so 1990. Use a framework like angularjs to learn front end MVW, and learn how to consume web service calls that deliver json to populate your model. There will be enough javascript in this small app for you to wrap your head around it. In an interview, smugly say "I know jquery, but I avoid it". That much should at least get you out of the bottom of the pack.
By definition, the answer is "none" (Score:5, Insightful)
By definition, the answer is "none". An entry level position doesn't need to require experience in a given programming language. It needs to require some familiarity with programming, sure. There is all kinds of stuff you probably should look for in such an individual. Aptitude to learn (from your senior and mid level developers who you picked partly because they are good at sharing knowledge), existing understanding of symbolic logic, common software design concepts like when to use sets instead of lists, the list (pun) goes on.
It is really absurd how snobby software developers are about who joins their ranks. Part of the absurd job req ads in tech aren't just due to hr managers trying to game the h1b system. They are in part there because of clueless software devs who have been moved into management because that is (for god knows what reason) considered a normal career path. Don't respond with "it is better to have no one then to have a bad coder!". You're right, but inexperience with a given language doesn't mean they won't be productive with that language in two weeks to a month. This is the very definition of entry level.
In my job? (Score:2)
None. But it would be weird if you didn't.
The key... (Score:2)
JS alone will get you nowhere. But it will win. (Score:3)
JS alone will get you nowhere. JS is part of todays web ecosystem. And developing for the web today is so hard, people doing it are either inexperienced and naive or - like me - sort-of specialized/focused in some vertical toolstack like LAMP + Wordpress + Bootstrap or something and never really happy with their results.
The problem is, that you have to know HTML5, CSS3, DOM perhaps some jQuery UI or HTML canvas stuff + UX + responsice webdesign + Typography & Layout + a workable set of backend tools (LAMP or such) to do anything usefull with JS. Which makes the whole thing basically impossible for an "entry level" developer to learn.
I suggest you find a team that has a working development pipeline, uses versioning (far to many webshops don't) and puts out good results and learn by doing.
As for JS in general - there's a lot of academic ragging on JS here, but most of it misses the point about JS entirely:
JS alone is like a mix of Python and Ruby made to look like Java (yeah, I know) and doesn't look very modern. However, what makes JS interesting is the fact that as a platform it is available basically anywhere. JS is todays PC of platforms. A toy, not taken seriously by anyone, but available for cheap/free everywhere. Which is why it is going to win in the long run, just like the toy-technology x86 did, eventually squishing every other architecture like a bug on it's way to total world dominance. In the early eighties, people would've laughed you out of the room for predicting that.
I personally wouldn't be suprised if JS eventually replaces PHP, Java and Co. on the serverside and takes over everything but system development on the clientside within the next decade or two. Be it natively or with languages that cross-compile to JS ... We already have a ton of those. Google is heading for bringing the second half of humanity online, and as far as I can tell, they're succeeding. Which in itself does put JS in a future-safe position.
JS, Browsers and the clientside webstack are a mess, but they are truely cross-platform, open and not controlled by a single entity. Very much like x86.
So no matter what you're doing, getting into JS at a professional level one way or the other isn't the worst thing to do.
My 2 cents.
We hire smart people, not ****.js developers (Score:2)
Sure, we give a programming test that basically asks "have you ever written any code in any language?" 90% of applicants fail this test (Think Fibonacci or leap year level difficulty, not 9 queens or tower of Hanoi hard). Any applicant that passes the "have you ever written a line of code" test, we just talk.
I don't care if you know node.js or angular.js or Knockout or wh
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All of it.
QFT. Came here to make this exact same post
Re:Yuck (Score:5, Informative)
Java != JavaScript; not even close, really.
Re: Yuck (Score:2)
Re:Yuck (Score:5, Funny)
Considering the comment, glad you did.
Re:Yuck (Score:5, Funny)
One is essentially a toy, designed for writing small pieces of code, and traditionally used and abused by inexperienced programmers.
The other is a scripting language for web browsers.
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Re:Depends on the job (Score:4, Funny)
It's the "If all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail" factor. Which unfortunately is ultra-high for JavaScript right now.
About the only JavaScript I know right now is Array(16).join('wat' - 1) + ' Batman!'
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Nothing with "JS" in its name should be running on the back end.
I agree, but the only serious competitor at this point is go.
Honestly, js on the server be nice... If you code it right, and declare things rather than code them. Also babeljs rocks.
Share logic between server and client (Score:2)
So in what language do you write input validation logic for the server, which gets translated into JavaScript to be used as input pre-validation logic on the client? Writing it twice, once in JavaScript and once in your preferred server-side language, is repeating yourself [wikipedia.org] and can lead to subtle disagreements in behavior between the two implementations.
Three equal signs (Score:2)
It takes a freaking rocket scientist to properly check for 'equals' in that language
In both PHP and JavaScript, === checks whether two expressions have the same type and value. Anyone who read Douglas Crockford's JavaScript: The Good Parts knows that. Now can I work for NASA?
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I would (almost) rather someone force me to learn PERL, rather than ever seriously programming in javascript again.
The thing I noticed about Perl is that 5 minutes after you have written something that works, you could look at it and it would be completely unclear how or why it works.
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Since personnel became HR.
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/Oblg. /sarcasm Right around the time Python was created ...
Sad, I know.
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Do you know what jquery is?
I don't listen to hip-hop.
Do you know what DOM means?
What I do at the weekends is none of your business!
Err... I mean no. No I do not.
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I would say it really depends on the job. When the post says "When someone lands their first JavaScript job", I envision the job as being possibly a website done in Node.JS with a lot of Javascript on the client side as well. I that kind of job, you'd better have a pretty good understanding of how javascript works, or you're going to have a hard time being productive. However, if you're "javascript job" is at a place where they use .Net, J2EE or some other language on the back end, and do most of their st
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