Category Archives: Learning Resources

Unit Testing In a Nutshell

Over the last several months I have been taking a deeper dive into software testing best practices.  Testing is a common “pain point” for a lot of developers and I’ve seen multiple projects that even have no tests at all because “it slows us down”. I’m a big believer in testing (and test driving) software to reduce bugs, enable confident refactoring and improve the design of the system.  Having no tests or poor coverage will really slow projects down in the long run. This post distills some best practices for Unit Testing and my hope is to make a case for embracing testing as a tool to help us build better software and make our lives easier, not more difficult.

Unit Testing in a Nutshell:

  • A unit test verifies a small piece of the system, runs fast and is isolated from other tests.
  • Unit tests should verify units of behavior and not just lines of code or implementation details. This makes the tests resistant to refactoring so they don’t break when implementation, but not functionality, changes in the system.
  • Unit tests can serve as documentation or a kind of Spec for the system and ideally should be written in a way that even a non-developer or business person can understand (i.e. the description of the test should describe a business scenario in plain English)
  • The purpose of unit tests are to enable sustainability of the system (to keep it from grinding to a halt due to bugs or breaking changes in the long run and to allow for refactoring and making changes with confidence)

Definitions:

  • Spec: Short for Specification. A description of what the software or system should do to satisfy stakeholders goals.
  • Unit of Behavior: A small grouping of code representing some behavior of the system. Unlike a unit of code (i.e. a single function or class), a unit of behavior can span multiple classes or objects.
  • Regression: A bug. When a feature stops working after a certain event (i.e. a code change etc.)
  • System Under Test (SUT): The part of the code in the system that is being tested. i.e. the classes, objects or functions.
  • Test Isolation: The ability for tests to run in parallel, sequentially, and in any order is called test isolation.
  • False Positive: A test that fails, but for the wrong reasons. This term can be confusing, so think of a test for the flu – if you test positive, that’s bad and means you have an illness, so here “positive” counter intuitively translates to a negative (i.e. a test failure) result.
  • False Negative: A test that passes, but for the wrong reasons. 
  • Test Double: A Mock, Stub, Spy, Dummy or Fake to mimic a dependency instead of using it directly in a test. The term comes from “Stunt Double” used in film making.  A future blog post will explore these in more detail.

What makes a good test? The properties of a good unit test:

  1. Resistant to regressions (Catches bugs.)
  2. Resistant to refactoring (The test is not brittle and will not break when code implementation, not functionality/behavior, changes.)
  3. Runs fast for rapid feedback (You should be able to keep unit tests running during development to verify changes do not break something as you’re coding.)
  4. Easy to maintain
  5. Isolated (The test can be run independently of other tests and in any sequence of order. This allows for parallel execution for faster test runs and eliminates unexpected bugs caused from shared states.)

Do not focus on achieving 100% Line Coverage, focus on coverage of Behavior and Use Cases

One of the benefits of good test coverage is to give you confidence that changes to the system (i.e. refactoring or adding features) does not break it’s desired behavior.

Focusing on achieving 100% line coverage can, counter-intuitively, actually be problematic because it forces you or your team to write tests just to achieve that benchmark, whether the tests are valuable or not. This also has the side effect of incentivizing testing implementation details making for brittle tests that will break when refactoring occurs. You will start getting more and more false positives from your tests which will reduce confidence in them.

Not only does this create extra work unnecessarily, it also makes developers hesitant to make changes and refactor because they will then need to fix a bunch of brittle tests. The code stagnates and rots over time.  Line coverage requirements are not necessarily a good idea and focusing on testing the observable behavior of the system will make for more valuable tests to cover what really matters.

Unit Tests need to run fast

You should have a fast running suite of tests that you can leave on watch mode while developing. The purpose of this is to enable you to catch bugs and breaking changes as soon as they happen. This greatly decreases debugging time because it saves you the trouble of hunting down exactly which part of the code broke something. If you have the tests running and they start failing, the part of the code that broke things was….the last change you made. This quick feedback loop will save lots of time that would otherwise be dedicated to debugging.

A Note on Naming Tests:

You should try to name your tests in such a way that a business person or domain expert would understand what the test is covering. This helps to make your test suite a documentation or spec for the system and what it’s expected functionality is. This in turn also makes the system as a whole and what it’s goals are easier to reason about and understand.

Suggestion:  Tests should verify facts about the system. You may want to consider removing words like “should” and replacing with “is”, and when naming tests in general consider making a statement as if it were a fact about the behavior of the system.  The C# testing tool XUnit, for example, actually uses [Fact] to declare a test definition.

Another suggestion is to just use plain English when naming tests instead of following a convention like: [MethodUnderTest]_[Scenario]_[ExpectedResult].
You shouldn’t use the name of the method or class in the test description because that is an implementation detail. If the function name changes, then you have to update all of the test names referencing it.

The Classical School vs. London School of Unit Testing:

There are two schools of testing: The Classical School and The London School.  There are pros and cons to each, but I prefer the Classical School style. It is advocated by industry stalwarts such as Martin Fowler and the arguments for it, in my opinion, are compelling.

Differences:
  • The London School prefers using Test Doubles for all dependencies except immutable objects vs. the Classical School which only mocks shared dependencies
  • The London School considers a unit a class or function, while The Classical School considers a unit a unit of behavior which could span multiple classes or functions.
  • The London School considers a test isolated if the class or unit is isolated completely from other classes through mocking all outside dependencies, while The Classical School considers isolation of an entire test (the unit of behavior is separate from another unit, dependencies for classes may not be mocked).

One of the main advantages of The London School of testing is that if a test fails, you know exactly where and what part of the code failed since it considers a unit to be very granular (a specific isolated class or function). The disadvantage is that more mocking makes for more fragile and brittle tests.  Since mocking everything except immutable objects, including intra-system communication, will require tests knowing more about implementation details instead of only verifying observable outcomes, they will be less resistant to refactoring.

Even though The Classical School of testing has some disadvantages like the lack of easily finding the specific failing function or class, these can be overcome by running the tests constantly to give you instant feedback when a breaking change is introduced – the source of the bug is easily found, it’s the last thing you wrote. The main advantage is that by testing observable behavior and outcomes, your tests become more resistant to refactoring, valuable and test the meaningful parts of the system.  This also provides important feedback about pieces of code that cause cascading failures across the system. The London School approach would only indicate the specific class that failed since the classes under test are completely isolated.


FURTHER READING AND RESOURCES: 

  • Unit Testing: Principles, Practices and Patterns by Vladimir Khorikov. An excellent book on best practices and approaches to Unit Testing including when and what to mock, what to test and more. This blog post was inspired by and based on ideas in this book.

BEM IN A NUTSHELL

BEM is a naming convention for CSS classes that facilitates writing clean and organized CSS.  This blog post will boil down what BEM is and how to use it in this “In a Nutshell” series entry.

BEM In a Nutshell:

  • BEM stands for Block, Element, Modifier, each of which represent the 3 parts of a class name using this convention.
  • The format for the BEM naming convention is <Block>__<Element>--<Modifier> where Block, Element and Modifier represent a part of the class name (see Definitions below).

The reason BEM is a useful naming method is because it explicitly describes which element(s) your CSS rules apply to and encourages incorporating Separation of Concerns in your CSS. This makes maintaining and changing your CSS much easier to do, since making a change for one class named using BEM will not inadvertently and unexpectedly break or change the presentation of other elements.

Definitions:

  • Block: A name that describes an HTML element that can be independently moved around in the HTML document and not lose it’s meaning.
  • Element: A name that describes an HTML element that is a child or descendant of a Block element and depends on that Block element to retain it’s meaning.
  • Modifier:  A name that describes an alternate state that an element can get into. For ex., a disabled state.

BEM IN ACTION:

Let’s say you have a form that is part of a login page on your website.  We want to use BEM to construct class names for various elements to apply CSS.
The following is an example using the BEM naming convention to apply class names to the various elements:

<form class="loginForm">
     <input type="text" name="username" class="loginForm__username-input" />
     <input type="password" name="password" class="loginForm__password-input" />
     <button type="submit" class="loginForm__submit-button--disabled">Log in</button>
</form>

loginForm is the Block element class name because the form that it labels can be moved anywhere in the document and still retain it’s meaning – it is the form specifically for logging in.

The username and password inputs are not independent of the login form, so they are labeled using the Element name part in the class name.  This part is preceded by the Block they depend on (loginForm) followed by a double underscore, so they are labelled with descriptive class names such as: loginForm__username-input.

The submit button of the form starts out in a disabled state, so we add a Modifier name to the class name we will use to set the CSS for it.  The Modifier name describes the state of the element preceded by two dashes, the Element it belongs to and the Block followed by two underscores: loginForm__submit-button--disabled.


FURTHER READING AND RESOURCES: 

  • Cleancoders.com – The “Clean Code in the Browser” Series is an excellent video course which demonstrates not only how to use BEM for clean CSS, but how to apply Clean Code and SOLID principles to your HTML/CSS and JavaScript code.  This blog post was based in part on the video discussing BEM.

Data Directed Programming – A Useful Pattern

A common problem in software development is how to deal with multiple but generally similar objects that differ in some way requiring handling, processing and application behavior specific to their subtype.  After going through a free MIT lecture series taught by  Hal Abelson and  Gerald Jay Sussman on the Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, I came away learning a very useful software design pattern that I have used in multiple projects now to deal with this situation.

In the lectures, it is sometimes called “Data Directed Programming” or “Dispatch on Type”, which is a way of handling multiple objects that may be related and the same in some general sense, but differ slightly requiring targeted processing and handling for them.  Think of cars like Hondas, Toyotas and Fords;  They are all cars and similar in a general sense – they all have brakes, transmissions and tires etc., but you might need to take a specific make to a specialized mechanic to perform certain repairs, because the specifics (i.e. the implementation) of those components can differ requiring special knowledge in order to work on them.

In software development you will at some point inevitably run into a situation where you are dealing with objects of a general type that require different processing based on their subtype.  This usually leads to all sorts of conditional gymnastics and if/else branches that can become complicated and difficult to understand and maintain.  That’s where this pattern can come in to save the day, keep your code clean and get you out of that mess.

Data Directed Programming – The Basic Pattern:

  • Keep a table or dictionary of types that map to procedures.
  • When you call a general procedure that would apply to a series of related objects with different subtypes, use the type as a lookup to find the corresponding behavior.

Let’s try to make the pattern concrete with an example (forgive me if it’s a little contrived, but it will get the point across and you will recognize when to use this pattern in the real world).  Imagine we have a chat app and we want to process messages that have the same overall shape, but can fall into subtypes such as Private, Broadcast or Group typed messages which differ in a relatively small way and require different handling.

We want to have a single re-usable procedure (or function) that handles message processing – one that we can call when a message comes in.  Let’s see how this looks without using Data Directed Programming (we’ll use vanilla JavaScript for the examples):

// General reusable message processing procedure
const onMessageSent = (message) => {
  // check if message subtype is private and handle that specific processing:
  if (message.type === 'private') {
    ...private message specific processing
  } else if (message.type === 'broadcast') {
    ...broadcast message specific processing
  } else if (message.type === 'group') {
    ...group message specific processing
  } else { 
    throw Error('Message type not recognized.');
  }
};

Note the multiple conditional branches we need to handle the different subtypes of messages appropriately.  It’s not horrible in this contrived example, but it can quickly get out of hand in real world situations and is generally just a bad idea to have complex if/else chains if they can be avoided.  This is where our pattern helps out to eliminate that.

If we make a table and use the message subtype as a primary ID key, we can just pass in the subtype and use the procedure that maps to it directly without having to make conditional branches in our code.

// Make a table, i.e. a dictionary, with keys of message subtypes that map to specialized procedures for that type:
const processMessage = {
  private: (msg) => ...private msg processing,
  broadcast: (msg) => ...broadcast msg processing,
  group: (msg) => ...group msg processing
};

// Our general message processing handler uses the dictionary and looks up the processing we want by subtype, then calling the processing procedure:
const onMessageSent = (message) => {  
  processMessage[message.type](message);
};

As you can see, this is quite a bit cleaner and we’ve gotten rid of all those conditional branches that can be difficult to read and understand.  In my opinion,  good software design and clean code can be based on this one question: Will someone who has never seen this code before be able to understand it quickly and easily?

I can’t stress enough how useful this pattern has been in many of the applications and products I’ve worked on.  This is a common scenario that too often ends up with complicated conditional branching. Obviously you don’t want to overuse any one pattern, but I have found it works well when this common situation arises.

Further Resources:

JavaScript Quirks In a Nutshell

When I was first learning JavaScript I would come across posts about how weird (or bad) the language was, and since it was the first programming language I learned and didn’t have anything else to compare it with, I didn’t understand why some people had a negative opinion of the language.

This is an attempt to assemble  a list of those JavaScript quirks that give it a bad wrap, and were confusing to me when I was learning, as well as key concepts that are vital to understand in order to write good (i.e. working) JavaScript code.  My goal is to create a concise list that would be helpful for those learning the language to reference in order to understand some of the “weird” behavior of JavaScript, and how to use the language more effectively while not having to learn these things “the hard way”, or learning them way too late.  The list is meant to be an overview to make the student aware of these things and serve as a launching point for further exploration and research.

NOTE: This list is a work in progress and constantly expanding.  It will be updated and is under construction, so if there are other quirks or important concepts that you would like to see included that would help one write more informed and well-written JavaScript code, drop a note in the comments section.  It would be great to have a one stop shop that has as many of the quirks and confusing things about JavaScript in one place for people who are learning to have as a reference.

Table of Contents:

  • …more to come

THE CREATION AND EXECUTION PHASE:

  • When the JavaScript Engine runs in the browser, it runs in two phases – a Creation Phase and an Execution Phase.
  • A Creation Phase and Execution Phase is run every time the JavaScript for the app initially loads to create the Global Execution Context, and also runs for each successive call to any function to create that function’s Execution Context.
Terms:
  • Creation Phase:  All variable names (including the built-in this variable), objects and functions are created and stored in memory for use in the Execution Phase.  For example, on an app initialization (first load), the global window object is created and variable names, as well as functions in the code are created, stored in memory space and attached to the global window object.  A Global Execution Context is created and the this keyword is created and setup.  In addition, an outer reference to the immediately outer Execution Context is set up which allows access to variables and objects in that context (In this case there wouldn’t be an outer context, since the global context is the top most level).
  • Execution Phase:  The JavaScript code is then run and executed, line by line, without stopping or pausing.
  • Execution Context:  The environment that is created during the Creation Phase that the JavaScript code runs inside of during the Execution Phase.  It defines the variables, objects, functions and function arguments which are available and accessible, as well as the scope chain, and the this value.

*A new Execution Context is created for every function that runs in JavaScript which entails running through a Creation and Execution Phase for it, and setting up an outer reference to the immediately surrounding Execution Context which allows access to the outer context’s variables and objects (see Scope Chain below for more details). 

  • Execution Stack:  A model or data structure in the JavaScript engine which keeps track of the order of the execution of code and it’s current Execution Context.  Every time a function is called in the code, a new Execution Context (or Call Stack) is created and placed at the top of the Stack.  JavaScript is a single threaded language (which means it runs one call stack at a time).  When the execution of the function is completed, that Execution Context is “popped” (removed) off the top of the Stack, and the code of the previous Execution Context on the Stack beneath it is run, picking up from where it left off from before the code from the popped Execution Context began running.  (Further resources: see this great Youtube video lecture on the Call Stack and the Event Loop)

HOISTING:

  • Refers to the storing of functions and variables in memory by the JavaScript engine during the Creation Phase (see above) before the code actually runs.   All variables are initially stored and set to a value of ‘undefined’, but all functions are stored complete in memory (including the declaration of their name as an identifier for a space in memory to look, and their value (the body of the function, etc.)).
  • This is why you can define a function in your code AFTER you actually call it, but variables will return undefined if they are referenced before their declaration in the code.

Example:

// Calling the function in the code before it's defined:
hoistedFunction();

hoistedFunction() {
  console.log("The function ran and worked!");   
}

In the above Example, the call to hoistedFunction() will log "The function ran and worked!" even though it is called before it is defined.  This is because during the Creation Phase, all functions defined in the code are “hoisted” into memory and made available before the code actually is run in the Execution Phase.  Note that this is different from variables, which are initially set to undefined and cannot be referenced before they are assigned in the code.


THE SCOPE CHAIN:

  • If a variable is used in a function and a value is not found for it inside that function’s scope or block, then JavaScript will look for it’s value in the function’s outer environment context.  If the value is not found there, then it will search the environment of the next outer context, and keep going all the way to the global environment to look for the value for the variable.
  • It should be noted that looking for an outer scoped variable’s value stops when the first match is found.
  • It’s possible to access a variable directly on the global scope with window.[variable name].
  • Lexical Scope:  Scope that is assigned based on where variable and function declarations are written in the code (i.e. functions written inside other function body blocks, variables declared in the global space outside of any function blocks, or inside a function’s scope because they are declared in the body, etc.).

Example of traversing the scope chain:

// a variable created at the top level execution context (global):
const globalVar = "from top level";
// Execution Context is created for initial function:
const exampleFunction = function() {
  const outerVar = "from outer context.";
   // A new Execution Context is created when this inner function runs, but it has access to the immediate outer context it's created in, and also the outer context of it's outer context up the scope chain to the top global level, etc.:
  (function() {
    console.log(outerVar); 
    console.log(globalVar);   
  })();
}

exampleFunction();
// When called, the function logs "from outer context" and then "from top level" - the JS Engine went up the scope chain to find outerVar and globalVar and look for it's value all the way up to the top level global context since they were not defined and assigned a value in the inner function block.

*NOTE THIS QUIRK:  When not in strict mode (‘use strict’), if a variable is not declared with var/let/const but assigned a value, then a variable of that name will be automatically created and implicitly declared in the global scope.

Example:

undeclared = 5;

// A global variable undeclared is created and assigned the value of 5 automatically by JavaScript.
NOTE: If 'use strict' is implemented, then a ReferenceError will be thrown and automatic declaration will not occur.

eval():

  • Built in function in JavaScript that takes a string as an argument, and treats the contents of the string as code that was authored code at that point in the program, consequently altering the corresponding Lexical Scope.
  • Can be used to execute dynamically created code (that’s not
    hard coded initially).
    In other words, you can dynamically generate code that is not hard coded at author time and eval() will inject it as if it were hard coded at author time – this is a way to cheat Lexical Scope (code that is scoped based on where it was authored), but has performance issues and is bad practice.
  •  If a string of code that eval(..) executes contains variable or function declarations, the existing lexical scope in which the eval(..) resides will be modified.
  • Note from reference book listed below: “The use-cases for dynamically generating code inside your program are incredibly rare, as the performance degradations are almost never worth the capability.”

Reference: You Don’t Know JS: Scope & Closures, Chaper 2.


PRIMITIVE TYPES:

Terms:
  • Type:  A category identifier for a piece of data which can be used by the JavaScript engine to determine how to handle the piece of data and what operations can be performed with it. For example, a Number type is assigned to a piece of data that is represented by an integer.  Since the data has a type of Number, JavaScript knows that it can do things like arithmetic with it and another piece of data of the same type, etc.
  • Primitive Type:  Represents a single value in JavaScript that is not an Object type.  (Everything in JavaScript is either a Primitive or an Object).
  • DYNAMIC TYPING:   JavaScript is a dynamically typed language.  The engine figures out and determines what type of data a variable holds (without having to declare it explicitly) while the code is running.  It’s possible for a variable to hold different types of values while the code is running.  You don’t specify what type of data is in a variable (you just use var/const/let, and JavaScript figures out what it is – a Number, Boolean, String, etc.).

6 Primitive Types:

  • Undefined: lack of existence (don’t use this or set variables to this)
  • Null: lack of existence – use this to set variables to nothing (let the engine use undefined). Null is not coerced by JS to 0 for comparisons, but coerced to 0 in other contexts (i.e. with Number() function).

*What is the difference between NULL and UNDEFINED?

null is read by JavaScript to mean that there is no value, but the developer intends it that way and set it to null explicitly (i.e. let x = null;), whereas undefined may throw an error as being an unintended absence of value from not assigning anything to the variable (i.e. let x;), and then accessing it (i.e. console.log(x); ), or by simply not declaring it at all in the first place.  Setting a value to undefined explicitly is not considered good practice.  If you want a value to be assigned as undefined or empty, then set it to null in the code.

  • Boolean:  A primitive that has a value of true or false.
  • Number:  An Integer or floating point number (decimal), i.e. 5 or 5.23 etc.
  • String:  Sequence of characters inside quotes (single or double).
  • Symbol (used in ES6 ):  May not be supported by some browsers.

THE EVENT LOOP:

Terms:
  • Event Loop:  A constantly running process that checks a Task Queue for any callbacks registered which are associated with asynchronous operations or Event Listeners, and pushes them to the Execution Stack whenever it is empty.
  • Task Queue: A built-in feature of the Event Loop that keeps track of and stores registered callbacks for any asynchronous operatons (network requests for example) or Event Listeners (for a ‘click’ Event when a user clicks a specified button for example) which are ready to be run and awaiting a push to the Call Stack from the Event Loop.
  • Web API:  Features and methods that come built-in from the browser and that are provided and made accessible to the JavaScript Runtime Engine  so you can access them in your JavaScript code.  Examples are multi-threaded operations made available by Web API methods such as setTimeout() or AJAX requests over the wire using the XHR (XmlHttpRequest) Object provided by the browser.  Javascript is a single-threaded language, so these features and methods allow access to additional threads which can be used to perform longer-running operations while not blocking the running of JavaScript code.
  • Thread:  A line (or “thread”) of instructions sent to a processor from an application. The set of instructions can be abandoned and come back to later where the processor left off with them last and then complete them (called context switching).
  • Execution Stack (aka Call Stack, or just Stack):  see Creation and Execution Phase entry above).
  • Callback:  a function that is registered to run when an asynchronous operation completes.  These are collected in the Task Queue, which the Event Loop constantly checks to push them to the Stack to run.
  • Event Listener:  A feature which can be accessed in JavaScript code with [element].addEventListener([event], [callback]) that registers a callback function to be run when a specified event occurs.  The browser throws events that can occur which are associated with HTML elements in the DOM as the user interacts with the application (i.e. a ‘click’ event is thrown by the browser when a user clicks on a button element on the page).  The callback registered is then pushed to the Task Queue when the event occurs and the Event Loop will see it and run the callback.

What the Event Loop does:  It’s job is to look at the Task Qeue and the Execution Stack in the JavaScript Runtime and if the Stack is empty, and there is anything (i.e. any callbacks registered) in the Task Queue, then it pushes that callback function to the Execution Stack for JavaScript to run it.


CLOSURES:

  • A closure is a feature of JavaScript which enables a function that is called outside of the scope it was created in (and after that scope’s execution context is cleared from the Stack) to have access to variables and values that were created in it’s original lexical scope (the function block where it was defined).
  • Basically, it’s an encapsulation of values and variables from a scope where a function was defined, so that when that function is passed as a value and called outside of that scope (i.e. returned and used elsewhere in the code), those variables and values remain accessible to it and their values in tact and defined as they were in the original scope.
  • Closures are a commonly used feature whenever you want to pass functions as values to be called at a later time in the code which maintain references to variables in the scope they were created in, and are also used in creating JavaScript Modules, for example, where you can expose methods on a returned object that have references to private, protected, internally defined and scoped variables by invoking a wrapper function which creates a closure, encapsulating those variable values which the exported object methods can reference.
  • IIFE’s (Immediately Invoked Function Expressions) can be used to create a scope and consequently a closure (this can be useful in a for loop, for example to capture the value of i).

Example Use Case with Asynchronous operation in a for loop using a Closure to capture the value of i:

for (var i = 0; i <= 5; i++) {
   (function(i) {
      fetch(`/page${i}`)
        .then(() => {
           console.log(`fetched page ${i}`);
        });
   })(i);
}
// The value of i will be encapsulated by the IIFE on each loop iteration and a reference maintained to it in the asynchronous callback (otherwise the value of i would always be the terminal value since the async function callback runs after the loop is finished and references the value of i at that time.

REVEALING MODULE PATTERN Use Case:

function userModule() {
   const username = "Brent";
   const eyeColor = "brown";

  function username() {
   console.log( username );
  }

  function eyeColor() {
    console.log( eyeColor );
  }

  return {
   username: username,
   eyeColor: eyeColor
  };
}
// Invoke the function to create a closure:
const user = userModule();

user.username(); // "Brent"
user.eyeColor(); // "brown"

// The userModule invocation exposes functions in that module that utilize closures to retain references to private protected variables and values which can be accessed when the exposed functions are called outside of the context they were defined in.

‘USE STRICT’:

  • By typing 'use strict;' in your code, this changes JavaScript’s un-opinionated, loose rules and flexible behavior by preventing type coercion and requiring more explicit syntax.
  • Considered good practice to implement in production code in order to catch potential errors.

Examples of behavior with ‘use strict’:

'use strict'; 

a = 1; // throws an error since var, let, const is not used to declare it. 

17 = '17'; // will throw an error since type coercion is turned off and the string '17' will not be converted to a number or vice versa.

// When calling a function the shorthand way (instead of using fn.call()), this is set to undefined in strict mode:

fn("arg"); // this is undefined.

// Normally when not using strict mode, this is set to the window object in a shorthand function call.
// See this article recommended by Dan Abramov:
Understanding Javascript Invocation and "this" by Yehuda Katz

MISC:

  • Everything in JavaScript is an Object or Primitive data type.
  • JavaScript compiles (translates the human readable code to machine code that the computer can understand and execute) just before execution, as opposed to other languages which are compiled well before.

External Resources/Further Reading:

  • You Don’t Know JS: Up & Going by Kyle Simpson – an excellent book series on Javascript to gain a more sophisticated understanding of how the language works – but written in a way that’s not to dense or difficult to digest.  E-book format is free to read online.
  • wtfjs.com – Funny website with many examples of strange JavaScript behavior.
  • Good article on Scope and THIS – from Digital Web Magazine by Mike West.

 

…More Items Coming… This list will continue to be updated.

Items planned for future updates:

  • Type Coercion
  • truthy and falsy concept and rules
  • Logical Operators
  • Comparisons
  • This keyword
  • New keyword
  • Prototypal Inheritance
  • The Prototype Chain
  • ES6 Classes
  • Promises
  • Synchronous vs. Asynchronous execution
  • Web APIs that add features and asynchronous functionality to JavaScript

Regular Expressions in a Nutshell

So, you want to validate an email that a user entered into a form to make sure that it is correctly formatted.  No problem, just use a Regular Expression to do this, like the following:

/^(?("")("".+?""@)|(([0-9a-zA-Z]((\.(?!\.))|[-!#\$%&'\*\+/=\?\^`\{\}\|~\w])*)(?<=[0-9a-zA-Z])@))(?(\[)(\[(\d{1,3}\.){3}\d{1,3}\])|(([0-9a-zA-Z][-\w]*[0-9a-zA-Z]\.)+[a-zA-Z]{2,6}))$/
What in the Sam Hill…???

If this was your response (like mine was when first discovering Regular Expressions), then this article is an attempt to demystify and decrypt this mess and explain it in a nutshell, and serve as an introduction to the topic.

Regular Expressions In a Nutshell:

  • In a Quora article about what the most useful and underrated skill in Computer Programming is, Jaime Potter responded that it’s knowing how to use Regular Expressions well.  He posted a picture diagram breaking down the components of a Regular Expression, which I think will best represent them in a nutshell (all credit goes to him as the source of this image diagram):

  • Typically, you would take a Regular Expression (like the one above) and use a matching method (like the preg_match() function in PHP) to see if a specified string matches the search patterns defined in the Regular Expression.  Common use cases  would be validating user submitted form data (for example, an email or address).

Definitions:

  • Regular Expression:  (paraphrased from Wikipedia) A sequence of characters that define a search pattern typically used to find, find and replace, or validate part or all of a string.   (Also referred to as regex or regexp).
  • Delimiter: A character or symbol that identifies a set of data or string of text as complete and separate.  Used to indicate or designate a group of characters or strings in code that are related to each other or an associated task, and to designate a complete statement or group of statements.  In Regular Expressions, the delimiter is the ‘/‘ at the beginning and end which contain it.  Another example would be the ‘;‘ at the end of a statement (i.e. let x = 5;).

REGULAR EXPRESSIONS CHEAT SHEET:

To get started, see this quick reference sheet that I discovered in the User Contributed Notes section of the preg_match() documentation on PHP.net.  This very helpful comment was made by a user named ‘force at md-t dot organd lists out a cheat-sheet for Regular Expression match patterns:

[abc]     A single character: a, b or c
[^abc]     Any single character but a, b, or c
[a-z]     Any single character in the range a-z
[a-zA-Z]     Any single character in the range a-z or A-Z
    Start of line
    End of line
\A     Start of string
\z     End of string
.     Any single character
\s     Any whitespace character
\S     Any non-whitespace character
\d     Any digit
\D     Any non-digit
\w     Any word character (letter, number, underscore)
\W     Any non-word character
\b     Any word boundary character
(...)     Capture everything enclosed
(a|b)     a or b
a?     Zero or one of a
a*     Zero or more of a
a+     One or more of a
a{3}     Exactly 3 of a
a{3,}     3 or more of a
a{3,6}     Between 3 and 6 of a

options: i case insensitive m make dot match newlines x ignore whitespace in regex o perform #{...} substitutions only once

Typical Use Example of Regular Expressions:

  • Validating user submitted form data, such as usernames, emails and addresses, etc. 

For example, to make sure that an email entered is in the correct format (i.e. ‘[email protected]’),  you can use a Regular Expression to define a search pattern that matches the valid email format, and then check to see if the user submitted email matches the pattern (in PHP, you can do this using the preg_match() method which will return 1 if the string matches the pattern defined in the regex).

Example:

$email = $_POST['user_submitted_email'];

$regexp = '/^[^0-9][_a-z0-9-]+(\.[_a-z0-9-]+)*@[a-z0-9-]+(\.[a-z0-9-]+)*(\.[a-z]{2,3})$/';

if (preg_match($regexp, $email)) {
    // process user submitted email;
} else { 
    // Error: email is not in a valid format;
}

Further Reading:

See this one page tutorial on Regular Expressions.  This is from a great site that could be considered a one stop shop for all things Regular Expression related at https://www.regular-expressions.info.  The site breaks down how to use Regular Expressions in a thorough and comprehensive, but digestible manner.

BONUS TIP:

Event Bubbling in a Nutshell

When reading through Stack Overflow posts having to do with Javascript, I sometimes came across the term Event Bubbling and never knew what it was really.  I decided to sit down and spend some time learning about it so I wouldn’t be puzzled anymore by it.  My main learning resources were two excellent Youtube tutorial videos:  Javascript Event Capture, Propogation and Bubbling by Wes Bos and Event Bubbling by The Net Ninja.   This is an excellent article as well on the topic.  I recommend you at least watch the Youtube tutorials, but I am going to attempt to boil the subject down into a single post here.

Event Bubbling In a Nutshell:

  • Events (such as ‘click’ events, for example) are registered not only by the target element where they originate, but by all of that element’s parents all the way up to the global element (i.e. the Window/Browser).
  • An Event occurs (a ‘click’, for example) and the click event is registered (this means recorded or noted and recognized by the browser).  The registered click event then goes from the Window Object down through the child elements and is registered on each during a ‘Capture Phase’ (<html> –> <body> –> <div> –> <form> –> <button>, for example) to find the Target Element (where the click event originated from, i.e. what element was clicked).  Once the click event has registered on the Target (‘Target Phase’), it then bubbles back up the DOM Tree (‘Event Bubbling Phase’) and is registered on all parent elements up through the Window Object triggering any Event Listeners or Handlers in the process.

Why it’s important to understand: 

  • To avoid unintentional Event Handle triggering on parent elements of the target, or to intentionally incorporate handling the event on a parent element. 
  • If there are any identical Event Listeners on the parent elements of the Event Target, then their respective Event Handlers will be triggered.  A click event on element A will trigger element A’s Event Handler as well as Element A’s parents’ Event Handlers for a click event.  

For more information and examples, keep reading:

Definitions:

  • Window Object: My non-technical understanding is to just think of it as the browser or the window you have open in the browser.  It contains all of the elements on the page.
  • Event Target:  The element that the Event originated from (i.e. the element that was clicked, for example).
  • Event Capture: The process of recording events that occur starting at the top of the DOM (the Window Object) and down through the parent elements related to the Event Target.
  • Event Propagation: To propagate, literally means to spread and promote widely.  The event is ‘spread widely’ and registered throughout the DOM tree from the top (Window Object) down to the event target, and back up to the top again.
  • Event Bubbling: The process in which the Event is registered on each successive parent element of the Event Target element all the way up to the Window Object.
  • Event Target Phase: This occurs in between the Capture and Bubbling Phase during Event Propagation.  During this phase, any listeners on the Event Target for the Event and their respective functions will be triggered and invoked.

The Process:

Event Bubbling happens in the course of what’s called Event Propagation, which has three main parts:

  • The Capture Phase: The event is recorded from the top of the DOM and down to find the event target.
  • The Target Phase: The Event is registered on the Target (the element it originated from) and any Listeners or Handlers are fired.
  • The Event Bubbling Phase:  After the Capture and Event Target Phase, the event is registered on each parent element of the Event Target, in order, up through the DOM Tree to the Window Object.

Important Note: Branch paths in the DOM for Events during Event Bubbling are static:  If the DOM tree is modified after the Event Listeners have been assigned, the modified DOM tree or added elements will not be used or included in the Event Bubbling process.

For example, if the handling of the Event involves creating/appending/inserting an additional parent element of the Event Target, then the inserted parent element will not register the Event as it bubbles up the DOM tree on future click events originating from the Event Target.  The Event will bubble only up through parent elements present in the DOM Tree when the Event Listener for that target was assigned (for instance, at the loading up of the page).

Additionally, an Event Listener that is assigned to a class of elements will not be applied to any elements of that class that are later added to the DOM Tree.

Scenarios Where Understanding Event Bubbling Can Help:

Example (consider the following HTML which contains a list of items with buttons that give the user the option to remove the item from the list, or add an item to the list):

<div>
  <ul id='theList'>
     <li id='item_copy'>List Item
       <button class='btn_remove'>Remove</button>
     </li>
     <li>List Item
        <button class='btn_remove'>Remove</button>
     </li>
  </ul>
  <button id='btn_add'>Add Item</button>
</div>

Now, the Javascript to assign Event Listeners and Handlers:

// Add a list item to the list when Add Item clicked:
<script>
const parent_el = document.getElementById('theList');
const li_content = document.getElementById('item_copy').innerHTML;
const add_btn = document.getElementById('btn_add');

add_btn.addEventListener('click', () => { 
    let created_li = document.createElement('li'); 
    created_li.innerHTML = li_content;
    parent_el.appendChild(created_li); 
});
// Assigns click event listener and handler for the remove buttons currently on the page: 
const remove_btns = document.getElementsByClassName('btn_remove');

// A click on .btn_remove removes item from the list: 
 Array.from(remove_btns).forEach(function(btn) {
     btn.addEventListener('click', (e) => {
     let target_btn = e.target;
     let li_to_remove = target_btn.parentElement;
     li_to_remove.remove();
     });
 });
</script>

In the above example, the remove buttons will not work on list items that are added by the user with the Add Item button.  The reason is because when the Event Listeners were assigned to the Remove buttons, the DOM  Tree did not include the added list items created when the user clicks Add Item.  So the Event Listeners and click handlers don’t exist on the newly created list items.

This is where Event Bubbling can come in to save the day.  You use this process to your advantage to solve this problem by assigning the Event Listener and Handler for the click to the parent element of the user added list items (this would be the <ul> with the id of “theList”).

This way when the user clicks on the remove button on the newly created list item, the click event will bubble up through the parent elements and the Event Listener on <ul> “theList” will be ready and waiting for it.  Once the click on the newly added remove button registers on <ul>, it’s target can be found and the remove element function fired.

Example:

 // Grab the pre-existing parent element (<ul>): 
 const the_List = document.getElementById('theList');
 // Add the listener to #theList and pass in the 
    event:
 the_List.addEventListener('click', (e) => {

 // Check to see what the Event Target of the caught    
    click was.
 // If it was the remove btn, then remove the list
    item:
 if (e.target.className == 'btn_remove') {
     let list_item = e.target.parentElement;
     list_item.remove();
     }
 });

Now, the list items added by the user after the page loads will be removed when the user clicks the remove button.  The <ul> ‘theList’ catches the click event as it bubbles up the DOM tree and handles it by finding the Event Target (the remove button clicked) and removing the parent element of it (the list item).

Hopefully, this summary on Event Bubbling will prove to be helpful to those wanting to get their feet wet in the subject and start to understand what it is and how understanding it can help solve problems like this that come up in your code.

OBJECT ORIENTED PROGRAMMING IN A NUTSHELL

This post is a brief overview of the fundamentals and principles of Object Oriented Prgramming (OOP).  It is a summary of my notes from an online course in PHP (see end of article for reference), so most of the examples are in PHP, but the principles are universal to OOP.

OOP In a Nutshell:

  • OOP (Object Oriented Programming) refers to a method of programming that works with data which is  grouped into a set called an ‘Object’.   
  • The Object can have properties (stored data) and/or methods (functions that the object can run and call).
  • The Object can be based on a blueprint or parent which defines properties and methods it inherits and has access to and can use (further abstracted and managed by an Interface in some cases).  An example of a blueprint or parent that Objects inherit from would be Classes.

That’s just the tip of the tip of the iceberg.  If your interested in the rest of the tip of the iceberg, then here is some more information:

Definitions:

  • Object: A set of data grouped together by a common theme.  An object could be stored in a variable, function or data structure.  Objects consist of key/value pairs (the key is a placeholder(or representative name) for data, and the value is the actual data stored and associated with the key).
  • Class: Describes the properties and methods of an object (it is like a blueprint or definition of an object). Properties can be variables, arrays, or data;  Methods are functions that create/define behaviors of the object.
  • Property: A key/value pair in an Object that stores descriptive data (for example, an Object holding data about a person could have a property key of ‘name’, which would hold the person’s name as the value).
  • Method: A key/value pair in an Object that stores behavioral data (i.e. a function that does something – for example, modifies some property data, or gets additional data and uses it somehow).  The term ‘Method‘ and ‘Function‘ mean basically the same thing.  When talking about Objects, a ‘Method‘ is basically a function that is stored inside of and can be called from an Object.
  • Instantiation: calling the class with the new keyword to make the properties and methods accessible to an object that is created (by assigning a variable to it).  Example:  $obj = new Class_name();
  • Instance: an object (represented by a variable, for example) that has access to and references  the properties and methods of a parent class.  The instance is created through the process of instantiation (using the new keyword; see above).  In other words, an object is an instance of a class.

Benefits of using OOP (Object Oriented Programming):

  • Enables modular functionality in code.  Complex functionality can be accomplished while simplifying the code and making it cleaner (easier to read and understand).
  • Updating the code or modifying and adding features and functionality is also made easier by using OOP.

CLASSES:

  • To create a Class use the class keyword, then make a name:

Note: The first letter of the name of the class must be CAPITALIZED!

Example (A Class named Car is created and a property and method are assigned to it):

class Car {
//Methods and properties go here;
//Example property:
     var $doors = 4;
//Example method:
     function moveWheels(){
         echo "Wheels are moving!";
     }
}
Other things to note in class creation:
  • When creating a class, create the properties before creating the
    methods.
  • Use the keyword var to create properties (you can assign values or not).
  • You can use method_exists(“methodName”); for debugging if trying to find methods in a lot of code.
Creating properties in the class:
  • Use the keyword var to create properties (you can assign values or not):

Example (the class Car is created with properties and methods defined.  The -> is an access operator that is similar to the . in Javascript):

class Car {
    //(properties created with var)
    var $wheels = 4; 
    var $hood = 1;
    var $engine = 1;
    var $doors = 4;

//Methods(functions) in the class:
//To modify or assign values to properties, use $this variable (refers to the object/class that it is in):

    function changeWheels() {
        $this->wheels = 10; 
        //changes the wheels property value.         
        //Note: you don't use the $ when
        //referencing the properties in this
        //function method to set them.
     }

    function moveWheels(){
        echo "Wheels are moving!";
    }
}

OBJECTS:

To use the properties and methods of a class in an object:

  • Create an instance of the class: use the keyword new followed by class_Name(); i.e. new Car(); <—this creates an ‘instance’ of the class.
  • Assign the instance of the class to a variable – the variable now
    stores the instance of the class and is an object that has access to
    properties and methods of the assigned class.

Example:

$hondaFit = new Car(); 
//this creates an instance of the Car class assigned to $hondaFit (which can be called an object).
To access methods/properties:
  • To access a property/method use the -> operator and the name of the property/method (without the $ included) in PHP.  In Javascript, use the . operator (objectName.property):
Example:
  $hondaFit->wheels;  //returns the value.   
//or 
  echo $hondaFit->wheels; //<--this echoes '4'.

//Example (method access): 
  $hondaFit->moveWheels();

//Modify or assign a value to the object property:
  $hondaFit->wheels = 10; 
//reassigns the value of $wheels to 10.

INHERITANCE:

  • A class can inherit and access the properties and methods of other classes by using the extends keyword:

Example:

class Class_A extends Class_B {

//Class_A now has access to props and methods of      //Class_B.

//Props and methods can be added which Class_A will have in addition to those of Class_B.

//you can override the parent (Class_A) property by using var and assigning a new value to it:
var $propNameFromClass_A = newValue;
}

CONSTRUCTORS:

  • Constructor functions execute every time a new instance is created of the parent class they’re created in (with the new keyword).

Examples of practical use:

  • Create default values when a user is created or some default values of a new object that are automatically created when the object is instantiated.
  •  Automatic validations and site maintenance when new objects are created.

Create a constructor in PHP using function, two
underscores, and construct :

Example:

class Class_A {
    function __construct(){
       //code goes here; this runs every time a new
       //instance of Class_A occurs.
    }
}

DATA ACCESSORS:

Three Types:
  • Public — available to the whole program – scope is global.
  • Protected — only available to the parent class or sub-classes
    (extended) that inherit from the parent.
  •  Private — only available to the parent class (not accessible by
    extended classes).

You can use accessors on methods and properties, as well as classes.

Syntax: put the access type (public protected or private) before the class keyword or variable/property name:

Example:

public class Class_A {
    private $prop1 = value; 
    //only accessible inside the class
}

Uses:
-can be used to hide as much of the inner workings of an object as possible. That way it is less likely to break. 
-If you make everything public, then another programmer might alter a variable which you don't want changed by anything other than the inner workings of your object.

STATIC MODIFIERS:

  • This makes a method or property only accessible by the class and not by an instance or object.
  • It allows the use of a property or method of a class without having to
    make an instance of it.
  • Static properties can be referenced in methods inside the class by
    using ClassName::$property

Use the static keyword in place of var:

class Class_A {
    static $property = value; 
//the property is attached to the class and
//not the instance of it.
    function funcName {
    Class_A::$property = newValue; 
    //use :: syntax to access static properties.
    }
}

Note: when accessing static data in the Class, use the $ in the variable name if present (as opposed to omitting it when working with an instance).

To access the static property or method:

Insert :: after the class name to access static data: 

Example: 

echo Class_A::$property;

or

Class_A::funcName(); 
//executes the method using the static property.

S.O.L.I.D. DESIGN PRINCIPLES IN OOP:

  • Fundamental OOP design patterns and concepts to make your code easier to maintain, debug and read.

S.O.L.I.D. stands for:

  • Single Responsibility Principle (SRP): Classes should have one and only one job, or should have one and only one reason to change.
  • Open/Closed Principle (OCP):  Classes/objects should be open for extension, but closed for modification. Easily extend a class without modifying it, make functionality in the class as abstract and broad as possible and leave more specific tasks and computation in the sub-classes that extend it.
  • Liskov Substitution Principle:  Every subclass should be substitutable for their base/parent class. The functionality and methods/properties of a subclass should not remove or significantly differ from the functionality/logic of it’s base/parent class it extends, so that uses of it as a type of the parent class will not break or not work as expected.
  • Interface Segregation Principle (ISP):  No client should be forced to depend on methods it does not use.  Interfaces belong to their clients and not to the implementations. Thus, we should always design them in a way to best suite our clients. we should break our interfaces in many smaller ones, so they better satisfy the exact needs of our clients. Interfaces are just plain function name definitions. There is no implementation of any kind of logic in them.. great advantage of clients depending only and only on what they actually need and use.
    *** ISP recommends that you should use many specialized interfaces instead one big interface. Interfaces belong to their clients and should represent what the clients need. This helps reducing dependencies on methods the client is not using.
  • Dependency Inversion Principle (DIP):  High-level modules should not depend on low-level modules.  Both should depend on abstractions.  Abstractions should not depend upon details. Details should depend upon abstractions.  Common solution is to implement Interfaces which are objects that specify what methods are available to classes or objects that implement them.

DESIGN PATTERNS IN OOP:

  • Singleton:  An object of which there is one and always only one copy or instance.  The object is not instantiated with copies that inherit from it or duplicated anywhere else in the application code.  The purpose of using a singleton could include conserving memory space and provide a single instance of an object that serves as a central and global resource that you need to manage throughout the application (i.e. a log).   The pattern is criticized because since it can expose your object to the global namespace, but if used carefully and depending on the use case, it can be an appropriate solution and pattern to implement.

FURTHER READING AND RESOURCES: 


Helpful Bonus Tips:

  • To check if a Class exists use class_exists("class_Name");  returns a boolean.  Can be used for debugging.
  • You can also use method_exists("method_Name"); to check for a method.  Can be used for debugging if trying to find methods in a lot of code.

This blog post is a summary of my notes taken from an online course on Udemy by Edwin Diaz called PHP for Beginners – Become a PHP Master – CMS Project.  There is a section on Object Oriented Programming in the course that was excellent and explained the fundamental concepts clearly and efficiently.   I’ve tried to boil the concepts down into a quick read as an introductory crash course to get started.

Compilation of Study Notes

This is a list with links to all of my notes so far from online courses, tutorials, Youtube videos, articles/blog posts, podcasts and books that I’ve read, watched, listened to and completed in case they might be of use to someone learning the topics.  It also shows some of the topics and technologies I have studied and am familiar with.  The notes are in basic text file format.  I tried to break down what I learned; it helps to take notes and summarize concepts when you are going through a course or tutorial.  I am going to make regular updates to this list as I continue to learn new languages and technologies.

Best Coding and Web Development Youtube Channels

Over the past several months I have used Youtube as a primary source of information and education on topics relating to Web Development and coding.  Over time I have branched out to use other sources for learning such as Udemy, books such as a Smarter Way to Learn Javascript by Mark Meyers, Eloquent Javascript by Marijn Haverbeke, Mozilla Developer Network w3schools.com and various blogs and podcasts (Career.js and Code Newbie for example), but the trunk of this tree of learning resources has been Youtube, and I discovered all of the other alternative and great learning resources as a result of exploring many different Web Development and coding channels there.  I want to list a few channels that I’ve found the most helpful in case you’re looking for a place to start and don’t know where to begin your coding education.  This is my list of the best coding and web development Youtube channels for beginners and experienced developers alike.

THENEWBOSTON

If you’re looking for a place to start, the channel that I believe is the most helpful for beginners who just want to get their feet wet and see if coding is something they might be interested in is Bucky Robert’s thenewboston channel.   Bucky is known as the ‘Godfather’ of Youtube programming channels since I believe his was one of the first (if not, the first) programming channels to explode in popularity on the Youtube platform.  The channel has many beginner tutorials on a variety of web development topics and many different languages.  The tutorials consist of a collection of bite-sized videos about 5 to 10 minutes in length, which divide the material up into manageable pieces for the beginner.  The style of teaching is very concise and to the point, but casual and also a bit entertaining.   He makes you feel like you’re sitting down with an experienced colleague just quickly showing you the ropes as a beginner, but not in a condescending or impatient way.  I think his tutorials are a great place to start for someone beginning their journey who just wants to see if programming is something they might like or be interested in doing.  I started with his xHTML/CSS tutorial and then moved on to his Javascript for Beginners tutorial.

LEARNCODE.ACADEMY

This is a fantastic channel I discovered recently.   Seriously, once you’ve got your feet wet in programming, just go here and watch and learn…you will not be disappointed.  It’s a good channel for getting into more sophisticated concepts of programming (like techniques for writing cleaner, more efficient code and more).  I love the teaching style used which is extremely to the point and straight forward – there is zero fluff here – just meat and substance.   Tutorials are extremely clear, easy to follow and very efficient and concise.  If you are familiar with DevTips (another well known programming channel run by a professional developer who works for Google), to give you an idea of the quality of content on this channel, he actually watches it to learn from the tutorials.  Lately I’ve been watching the Modular Javascript series, which is a great overview of making your code easier to maintain, debug and read.  Another video of his I discovered recently was an introduction to Machine Learning using Javascript.  I can’t recommend this channel highly enough.  I think it is my favorite Youtube programming channel of all of them.

TRAVERSY MEDIA

Another great channel to check out once you have your feet wet and went through some beginner tutorials is Traversy Media.  I have found that this channel is helpful if you already have a handle on the basics of a particular language and want to get a better idea of how to implement and use the language in a project.  There are crash course videos that quickly go over the main concepts and techniques in a particular language and also quick project builds where Brad Traversy (the channel author) videos himself building a small application using a particular language/framework.  I’ve found those very helpful to watch because they demonstrate how to actually apply what you’ve learned (see this video on how to Build An HTML5 Website With A Responsive Layout).  One of the most helpful videos I watched of his recently was his Web Development in 2018 – A Practical Guide.  He does a series every year on what’s hot in the field and gives you an idea of what you should be studying and putting on your list to learn.

SYLVESTER MORGAN

Sylvester Morgan’s channel is a channel that I’ve discovered recently and added to my list of Youtube resources.  He describes his journey to becoming a developer from relatively humble beginnings and having to deal with self doubt and supporting a family in the middle of a career change.  I’ve found the content to be inspiring and a good look into how someone without a degree in Computer Science or a lot of background in coding can teach themselves what they need to know.  His video, “How I Became A Software Developer Without a Degree” lays out a plan and strategy for deciding what to teach yourself and where to find resources by looking at Computer Science degree curriculum and building a learning plan for yourself.  He is very self disciplined, humble and down to earth and I look forward to watching more of his content.

FUN FUN FUNCTION

If you have Javascript questions, just go here.  This guy is phenomenal and he is a professional developer for Spotify.  He is a good teacher and can break down concepts very well.  In addition to demonstrating the concepts he teaches, he is also concise and the tutorials are usually around ten minutes.   He has a very animated personality, so the material is not presented in a dry manner, but as you would expect from the channel title, is delivered in a ‘fun’ way.  By far this is one of my favorite programming channels on Youtube, and I will be going through the content for a long time to come.

MMTUTS

I’ve found mmtuts’ channel to be useful when looking for a demonstration on how to do a specific task (like setting up a connection to a database in PHP, for example see this video).  His videos are mostly to the point with a bit of entertainment and personality thrown in.  I find myself going to his channel if I’m wanting to see a quick demonstration of how to do something specific, lately dealing with database connections and querying in PHP.

DAVID MAHLER

David Mahler’s channel is also a recent discovery and I’ve found his tutorials on Git and Github to be very helpful and straight-forward (see this one here on Git Branches and Merging).  His teaching style is very dry, but I love it because it is just straight to business and concise without any distracting fluff.  The information is presented clearly and efficiently, which is exactly what I’m looking for in a tutorial.

CODING PHASE

Finally, there is Coding Phase.  The author of the channel generously offers help and support to beginners trying to learn to code and has a ‘no B.S.’ style.  The reason I like this channel is that the author doesn’t sugar coat anything and tries to give the viewer a realistic picture of what the web development industry is like and what it takes to be a developer.  He talks about what you’ll encounter in the real world as an entry level developer and discusses some of the ‘myths’ and controversial topics in the software development industry, such as becoming a developer in a short amount of time, unreasonably high salary expectations for junior developers and whether coding boot-camps are really worth it.  Somehow, all the while, he still manages to be encouraging and positive towards those who are learning and trying to become developers.  I haven’t used his channel as a source of learning yet, but I know he offers some online courses which I’m sure are great.  Right now, I watch his content because I like hearing about a different (and maybe more realistic) perspective on the software/web development industry.  He also does some portfolio reviews of people who are trying to break into the industry, and they will give you a good idea of the level you need to be at (he doesn’t go easy on the reviews, but again is still encouraging).  He has a very useful list of the ‘best’ courses on Udemy for Web Development.  I’ve completed the Javascript: Understanding the Weird Parts course, and it was so good, that I would be willing to  believe it is one of the best courses on JS out there.  His list of best web development courses is:

Ultimate MYSQL Course

Web Developer Bootcamp

JavaScript: Understanding the Weird Parts

ES6 Javascript

Learn React

Angular 5 the complete guide

There are a few other channels I check out, but these have been the most helpful to me and I find myself coming back to them more often.  I think they will be of most help to those looking for a place to start or additional resources to explore and add to their list.  If you want to see all of the channels that I follow, see my Youtube channel here.

 

 

 

A Good Javascript Tutorial on Udemy (It’s great!)

When scouring Youtube and the internet in search of the best Javascript tutorial I could find, I noticed repeat recommendations for certain courses on Udemy that included Anthony Alicea’s course, “Javascript: Understanding the Weird Parts.

When you see something recommended multiple times from independent and varying reputable sources, it’s a good idea to check it out.   I promptly purchased the course for $10.00 (it’s normally about $15.00 I believe) on a New Year’s sale and began devouring the course.  I completed it yesterday, and I can say that the course is more than worth it and it lived up to all of the recommendations.

The teaching approach taken by Mr. Alicea is to examine how Javascript works “under the hood.”  There is an emphasis put on “understanding” over “imitating.”  The method is very effective and is employed with great skill.  I really did feel like I was learning the “Why” in addition to the “How.”  Concepts and terms are broken down and explained in plain English to the student with prompts like “Big Word Alert”, where an intimidating term like “Immediately Invoked Function Expressions” is explained in a concise and straight-forward manner, de-mystifying any jargon.  The course was very well thought out and logically structured as well.

Before taking the course, you should know some basic Javascript.  I started with this excellent tutorial(link) by Bucky Roberts on his channel, thenewboston, before taking Alicea’s course on Udemy.    The tutorial is concise and to the point while being slightly entertaining; all of Bucky’s tutorials are really well done and great for beginners who don’t know where to start.  After going through that beginner’s tutorial, I was able to keep up in the Udemy course and not be lost from the beginning.

Topics covered in the Udemy course included (very partial list!):

  • Execution Contexts
  • The Execution Stack
  • Scope Chains and Namespace
  • Precedence and Associativity (for Operators)
  • Closures
  • IIFEs (Immediately Invoked Function Expressions)
  • First Class Functions
  • Functional Programming
  • Prototypes and Prototypal Inheritance
  • Function Constructors
  • Examining Frameworks/Libraries (JQuery)

The lectures on the Execution Stack, Execution Contexts and Closures were invaluable to me and clearly explained more advanced concepts and ways that the Javascript Engine works that would have taken me much longer to understand or become aware of without taking the course.  I’d almost say it was worth it for those lectures alone, but the rest of the material was just as informative and helpful.

The Deep Dive Into Source Code section to get what the teacher calls an “opensource education,” was eye opening and very interesting.  Taking a look at famous libraries and frameworks like JQuery and underscore.js can be intimidating, but Alicea breaks some of the code down and shows you how to get started taking it apart in order to learn from it.  A great source that the course exposed me to was the annotated version of underscore.js which can be found here  and the uncompressed development version of JQuery which can be found here.  These versions of the libraries are commented and annotated to explain what is happening in the code.

I can’t recommend the course highly enough if you have an interest in learning Javascript.  Now that I’ve taken Bucky Robert’s beginner tutorial and Javascript: Understanding the Weird Parts, I think I have a solid foundation in Javascript to build on in the future as I continue to learn more about the language.  If you’re interested in getting an idea of what is taught in the beginner’s tutorial and the course, you can look at my notes that I took while studying and going through them.  They are very rough and basic in format; just in a simple text file, they were just meant to help me remember and digest some of the concepts, but they might prove helpful to look through if you’re learning or interested in taking the courses.

JAVASCRIPT NOTES