NGNTJS - part 0
This article is the introduction to the NGNTJS article series.
There is no technical information in this part.
Here is just a summary of the article series preparation, content and about choosing the title. Technical part begins from part 1.
At the end of this section, there are links to all parts of the article series, as well as some useful links that are not included in the article series.
Having used JavaScript for quite some time, there was a feeling that there were "dark" aspects to the language that needed to be explored. An impression was created that this situation was similar to a case when a child, using the language he learned from childhood, tries to understand its structure, regardless of the fact that he did not know the structure of the language and the interaction with the environment in depth, he used it for a long time as needed.
Having reached such a "natural" evolutionary period, I tried to take the time to explore those "dark" sides, as well as review what I had learned so far.
At first, the amount of required network resources seemed small because the knowledge base I needed to explore them was relatively small. Over time, reading various articles on Medium, watching various conference talks on YouTube, exploring various GitHub repos, reading blog articles from various lead IT companies, reading discussions on StackOverflow, Reddit, and similar platforms have added to the number of resources I consider must-read. Those sources that I was using brought with them direct or indirect links to dozens of other sources, and this was already like an "obsession".
New questions, new "dark" sides were constantly arising.
However, over time, the feeling was formed that the previously "dark" sides were "illuminated". There was a pleasant feeling of confidence when the basic knowledge helped to understand each subsequent material much faster. When enough basic knowledge was already formed, there was a desire to gather in one place everything that would be necessary to learn "virtual me" in the past, when I still wanted to start using this language (this can apply to other languages or even fields).
I do not rule out that even after making this series of articles openly available, there may still be updates/corrections/additions, but in any case, I tried to present the information as completely as possible in the articles of this series in order to avoid such cases as much as possible.
[3.6 roentgen scene]
In 2019 HBO's "Chernobyl" 5-part mini-series is gaining popularity, and the famous short dialogue in it is starting to be used on many occasions:
Dyatlov: What does the dosimeter say?
Akimov: 3.6 roentgen. But that's as high as the meter…
Dyatlov: 3.6 - not great, not terrible.
I think it will not be new if I mention the following point of view: There is no "good" or "bad" technology, instead there is the appropriateness of using the technology in a given situation (we don't mention who uses it yet). It may depend on the environment, period, financial situation, company's expediency, time saving and other factors, or a combination of them.
Before making this material, being a supporter of that point of view, I applied the JavaScript language to solve various problems using its capabilities. After collecting this material, I also have the same view. Based on perhaps subjective circumstances, JavaScript has both its positive and negative sides.
Taking into account the principle of neither the best nor the worst, I chose the title of this series of articles
"Not Great, Not Terrible JavaScript"
In this series of articles, we will not try to learn the JavaScript language, but we will study the history of the language, the reasons and goals of its creation, the environments where it works, the development of these environments, etc.
Below is the series of articles:
- [NTNTJS - part 1] Browsers; JavaScript Creation
- [NTNTJS - part 2] JavaScript Engine: meaning and structure
- [NTNTJS - part 3] JavaScript: Execution Context, Data Storing
- [NTNTJS - part 4] Node.js: libUV, introducing event-loop
- [NTNTJS - part 5] Node.js: thread pool, real life analogy
- [NTNTJS - part 6] Node.js: event-loop with practical examples. A big picture
- [NTNTJS - part 7] JavaScript: language, engines, runtimes, environments
Within the articles there will be many links to sources where the material can be found in more detail and/or which I have used in preparing this series of articles and/or which I think is worth studying.
Below I will post the links that are not directly in the article series, but are still related to the topic of them:
- Eich and Crockford on the Future of JavaScript: Insight from the Creators of JavaScript and JSON [Jul, 2018]
- JavaScript Visualized Series' Articles [Nov, 2019]
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To explore projects working with various modern technologies, you can follow me on GitHub, where I actively publicize much of my work.
For more information, you can visit my website: https://boolfalse.com/
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