Panel

Joe Eames (twitter github blog)
Tim Caswell (twitter github howtonode.org)
Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up)
AJ O’Neal (twitter github blog)

Discussion
00:56 - Why JavaScript is hard to learn

02:30 - This

05:30 - Bind

09:11 - Browsers

11:01 - Class-based inheritance

Prototypal inheritance

16:37 - New function

18:51 - Closures

20:51 - JavaScript is asynchronous

22:14 - Variable scoping

Hoisting

26:14 - Numbers and math

(AJ joins the podcast)
== ’s vs === ’s

32:15 - Things that make JavaScript hard after learning JavaScript

Package management

35:06 - Numbers (cont’d)

Crypto
Bitwise operations
Strings
Effective JavaScript by David Herman
044 JSJ Book Club: Effective JavaScript with David Herman

40:16 - Changing/Evolving JavaScript

43:31 - Environmental reasons that make JavaScript Hard

Tooling

48:25 - Few projects are primarily JavaScript

49:07 - Adolescence and the JavaScript Ecosystem

53:59 - Running JavaScript
Picks

Sharpie Metallic Silver (AJ)
The how and why of auto-executing functions (in JavaScript) (AJ)
The JavaScript Unicycle (AJ)
RSA (Tim)
OUYA (Tim)
Borderlands 2 (Joe)
MechWarrior Tactics (Chuck)
Testing Clientside JavaScript (Joe)
Fire Up Ember.js | PeepCode (Chuck)
Meet Chef (Part 2 of 2) | PeepCode (Chuck)

Next Week
MooTools with Arian Stolwijk and Valerio Proietti
Transcript
TIM: I’m just learning lots of math and attempting to do real math in JavaScript is a fun challenge.

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CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 48 of the JavaScript Jabber show. This week on our panel, we have Joe Eames.

JOE: Howdy!

CHUCK: We also have Tim Caswell.

TIM: Hello!

CHUCK: And I’m Charles Max Wood from DevChat.tv. And when this episode goes out, you’re going to have about two weeks left if you wanted to sign up for my Rails Ramp Up course. You’ll find that at RailsRampUp.com. I’ve been working hard on that.

This week, we’re going to talk about why JavaScript is hard. And I think it was Tim that came on and said, “So, we’re talking about why JavaScript sucks?” And I didn’t want to call it that but at the same time, it’s one of the -- I think the reasons that people find JavaScript hard and the reasons some people say that JavaScript sucks are kind of the same thing. So, if you want to think of it that way, go right ahead.

But I kind of wanted to talk about this for a couple of reasons. One was that I was at the users’ group meeting last week and they talked about some of the things that make JavaScript hard and I don’t remember what they all were. But there were a few things that, there are some concepts that are markedly different from what you find in other languages or at least some of the concepts exist in the other languages but they aren’t kind of as important or as in-your-face as they are in JavaScript.

Anyway, the other reason is that I was thinking about when I first started this show. And when I first started the show, I was a web developer that was kind of like, “jQuery, whoo!” And thought jQuery and JavaScript, you know, were mostly the same in the sense that the only way to write sane JavaScript was to use jQuery. And so, I wanted to talk around some of the things that I’ve learned over the last year from ... Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/javascript-jabber/donations Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

048 JSJ Why JavaScript Is Hard

JavaScript Jabber