In the first course in computer science we (students) received the following words of wisdom from the lecturer:
Above anything avoid JavaScript.
A few years later I started working as a programmer (late 2005). Some small that we could things arose impossible without the use of JavaScript. One of my coworkers showed me how to add some bits of extra functionality that the users needed (easier user interface). Later on there was a need for drag and drop in the browser. I implemented this by using code from another coworker. I updated an editor for presenting study programs. I feel that that experience is a failure. It took me at least 2-3 weeks to get something that wasn’t decent enough. I tried to write good code, but failed. Both the server-side and client-side code is a mess. Fortunately this code is rendered obsolete by the fact that the system I worked on contains more information and therefore can generate such presentations without any manual editing. What I am trying to say: That coding experience sucked.
Fast forward to 2009. I’ve started working in a team developing what can best be described as an advanced editor (specialized for one purpose) on the web. Enter jQuery: Rich text editing, ajax, items that can be saved without the whole form being submitted, et.c.. The weirdness of developing JavaScript almost gone:
Because of the above the quality of the code increases.
Since there is no compilation of JavaScript there is a need to use some form of lint on the code to catch syntax errors, legal JavaScript but bad syntax et.c.. There are two JavaScript lint implementations that I know of: JavaScript lint and jslint. I use both. Jslint is a bit harder to set up in visual studio, but is stricter and finds more errors (out of the box). I might not have read enough of the documentation for JavaScript lint in order to use it efficiently. With the use of lint hard to find bugs and errors can be found in a matter of minutes instead of days, makes these tools invaluable.
Do you want to send a comment or give me a hint about any issues with a blog post: Open up an issue on GitHub.
Do you want to fix an error or add a comment published on the blog? You can do a fork of this post and do a pull request on github.
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