Getting Started

with Javascript

About Me

Darren DeRidder / @73rhodes
Metrics Technologies - cloud-based EDA startup
Real-time AAA systems, telecom, Network & Mobile Security
Mobile World Congress
Blackhat Security Conference
Ottawa JavaScript

javascript everywhere

• Web applications (browser & server side)
• Mobile apps
• Web services
• Desktop apps
• Scripts and utilities
• Extension frameworks

Learning

• A re-introduction to JavaScript (MDN)
• Eloquent JavaScript (Book)
• Codecademy JavaScript (Tutorial)
• Nodeschool
• NodeJS Module Patterns (me!)
• Using REST

Tools - the Basics

• OS X, *nix, (VirtualBox, Docker)
• Node and NPM
• Google Chrome

Tools - Code Repos & Services

• github or gitlab
• Travic CI
• CodeClimate

• VS Code, Atom, SublimeText
• vim

Tools - Lint All The Things!

Tools - Code quality

Tools - Debugging

• chrome dev tools
• node --inspect
• postman

Back-end

• Express for building REST APIs
• or Loopback

Front-end

• Knockout (low learning curve)
• Vue (the way of the future)
• React (currently popular)
• See also: TodoMVC

Native apps

• Desktop - Electron
• Mobile - Apache Cordova

Unit testing

• Mocha
• Istanbul (code coverage)

CSS

Processes

• test & lint up-front, and in your build pipeline
• build & test on every commit to the repo
• measure code coverage, aim for > 80% but not 100%
• API-first development

MOAR!

• microjs
• NASA Coding Standards (applied to JavaScript)
• Swagger, for documenting your APIs