17 ms·

Learn ES6 and ES7 in 7 Days

88 points by k2052 9y ago

g_delgado14 9y ago
Cool website. Some thoughts / constructive criticism: Why would I be incentivized to get the full ES7 book when there are already quality materials out there for me for free (i.e. ponyfoo's articles are amazing). In contrast, I was very attracted to the article on building a list - it's pretty unique and shines a light on interesting CS & JS concepts.
- k2052 9y ago
  Thanks for the feedback! You are definitely right that there is a ton of material on this subject already out there. I intentionally chose a tiny subject I know a lot about that has mass appeal, so I could test the waters a bit. I have written more niche content on Crystal and also a few CS fundamentals focused articles. More niche content is planned as well as more mass appeal content until I get a feel for what the right focuses are. My theory is that building an audience for a site like this is a mix of niche content and mass appeal content. I honestly have no idea what that mix is yet and what type of content to focus on, still figuring that out. Your feedback is massively appreciated! It will without a doubt influence the direction I take the site in! As far as the value of this book over other resources, I would say the main separating factor is my writing style. If you like non-serious writing that leans much more towards helping you grok concepts than technical correctness then you will enjoy it. There is no stuff like "A monad is just a monoid in the category of endofunctors" to be found within my writing. Also there are lots of references :) Thanks again for the feedback!
  - uvesten 9y ago
    Looks nice! Spotted a couple of grammar errors on the front page, though: Day three: * Learn why ES6 modules are static and why its awesome Day five: * Learn how to generators can be used to manage promises
    - k2052 9y ago
      Oops. Thanks for noticing and reporting! Will push fixes soonish!
acmecorps 9y ago
Looks nice - and the font! ;) On a more serious note, I know ruby, but I really want to learn JS - is this a good place to start? Or, is there a better place to start, and then come back here?
- k2052 9y ago
  It is more targeted towards people that know some JS but want to learn ES6 or are struggling with parts of ES6. It is a quick mini-book focused on ES6 with some refresher of more advanced-ish JS concepts like hoisting and closures. It says 7 days, but you could easily digest the content in a weekend :) I'd recommend you check out other resources first then comeback. I highly recommend the You Don't Know JS books https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS
- yoodenvranx 9y ago
  My favorite JS book at the moment is http://eloquentjavascript.net/ http://eloquentjavascript.net/
- sandGorgon 9y ago
  I dont like vanilla JS. I appreciate and am highly productive in ES6. For new-to-javascripties, I generally recommend skipping over vanilla js and going straight to ES6. You can easily run ES6 code in nodejs - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/36417585/how-to-execute-es6-scripts-from-cli http://stackoverflow.com/questions/36417585/how-to-execute-e... (and obviously in everything else like reactjs, etc)
- TheAceOfHearts 9y ago
  As I commented on the parent [0], I'd suggest checking out the JavaScript books by Dr. Axel Rauschmayer! In addition to learning about the language, he also published Setting up ES6, which covers how you'd go about setting up your environment in order to target node and browsers that support ES5. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14105020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14105020
partycoder 9y ago
On day 8 you will learn how to use asynchronous code to escape a try/catch block. On day 9 you will learn how to leak memory with closures. On day 10 you will learn how to do unsafe numeric operations with IEEE 754 floating point precision numbers. On day 11 you will learn that the pseudorandom generator in JS is VM specific and may not be secure. On day 12 you will learn to leak memory by binding functions. On day 13 you will learn to add timeouts to asynchronous operations so they don't last forever. On day 14 you will learn what the floating point epsilon is and how number comparisons are unreliable.
- k2052 9y ago
  wow you must be fun at parties! (that is mostly just a pun on your username not meant to convey lots of snark) anyways lol some of that is too real jokes aside I think web development has come a long way and JS gets a bit of a bad rep. Full stack JS is insanely productive as a stack when you consider what you can build with it. It might be buggy and make you say "wat?" a lot but in exchange you can build insanely complex apps in timeframes that used to be the stuff of dreams. Granted many times what we build has no need to be so insanely complex, but when we really need it JS is there to make complicated things just magically easy to build.
  - partycoder 9y ago
    I think all technologies have sharp edges somewhere, and the way to stay afloat in this business is staying alert. Testing assumptions help, be it through quick REPL experimentation or a unit test. JavaScript has some bad fame around unintuitive behavior but you can find these styles of issues in most languages. A random example: Scala. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiJycy6dFSQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiJycy6dFSQ
  - PerfectDlite 9y ago
    > It might be buggy and make you say "wat?" a lot but in exchange you can build insanely complex apps Insanely complex apps on a buggy foundation? What could possibly go wrong...
TheAceOfHearts 9y ago
IMO, continuing to use the ES6, ES7, ES8 naming is probably going to end up confusing more people. I thought renaming ES6 to ES2015 was a bad idea, since it was already widely used. It would've been better to make the change after ES6. However, going forward, wouldn't it be better to follow along with the ES{YYYY} convention? For anyone interested in learning about all these newer JavaScript features, I'd highly suggest checking out the JavaScript books by Dr. Axel Rauschmayer [0]. All the books can be read freely, although I'd strongly encourage you to buy em if you find em useful. Before reading Exploring ES6, I thought I knew everything about ES2015, but skimming through it I found tons of things I hadn't been aware of. His books are the gold-standard JavaScript reference. [0] http://exploringjs.com http://exploringjs.com
- noir_lord 9y ago
  Thank you! I'd seen these posted before and remember thinking how good they looked and then promptly forgot enough I've not been able to find them again.
rckungdu 9y ago
Maybe they should "get good" at learning how to format their website for mobile. Fail!

88 points by k2052 9y ago

Cool website. Some thoughts / constructive criticism: Why would I be incentivized to get the full ES7 book when there are already quality materials out there for me for free (i.e. ponyfoo's articles are amazing). In contrast, I was very attracted to the article on building a list - it's pretty unique and shines a light on interesting CS & JS concepts.

k2052 9y ago
Thanks for the feedback! You are definitely right that there is a ton of material on this subject already out there. I intentionally chose a tiny subject I know a lot about that has mass appeal, so I could test the waters a bit. I have written more niche content on Crystal and also a few CS fundamentals focused articles. More niche content is planned as well as more mass appeal content until I get a feel for what the right focuses are. My theory is that building an audience for a site like this is a mix of niche content and mass appeal content. I honestly have no idea what that mix is yet and what type of content to focus on, still figuring that out. Your feedback is massively appreciated! It will without a doubt influence the direction I take the site in! As far as the value of this book over other resources, I would say the main separating factor is my writing style. If you like non-serious writing that leans much more towards helping you grok concepts than technical correctness then you will enjoy it. There is no stuff like "A monad is just a monoid in the category of endofunctors" to be found within my writing. Also there are lots of references :) Thanks again for the feedback!
- uvesten 9y ago
  Looks nice! Spotted a couple of grammar errors on the front page, though: Day three: * Learn why ES6 modules are static and why its awesome Day five: * Learn how to generators can be used to manage promises
  - k2052 9y ago
    Oops. Thanks for noticing and reporting! Will push fixes soonish!

acmecorps 9y ago

Looks nice - and the font! ;) On a more serious note, I know ruby, but I really want to learn JS - is this a good place to start? Or, is there a better place to start, and then come back here?

k2052 9y ago
It is more targeted towards people that know some JS but want to learn ES6 or are struggling with parts of ES6. It is a quick mini-book focused on ES6 with some refresher of more advanced-ish JS concepts like hoisting and closures. It says 7 days, but you could easily digest the content in a weekend :) I'd recommend you check out other resources first then comeback. I highly recommend the You Don't Know JS books https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS
yoodenvranx 9y ago
My favorite JS book at the moment is http://eloquentjavascript.net/ http://eloquentjavascript.net/
sandGorgon 9y ago
I dont like vanilla JS. I appreciate and am highly productive in ES6. For new-to-javascripties, I generally recommend skipping over vanilla js and going straight to ES6. You can easily run ES6 code in nodejs - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/36417585/how-to-execute-es6-scripts-from-cli http://stackoverflow.com/questions/36417585/how-to-execute-e... (and obviously in everything else like reactjs, etc)
TheAceOfHearts 9y ago
As I commented on the parent [0], I'd suggest checking out the JavaScript books by Dr. Axel Rauschmayer! In addition to learning about the language, he also published Setting up ES6, which covers how you'd go about setting up your environment in order to target node and browsers that support ES5. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14105020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14105020

partycoder 9y ago

On day 8 you will learn how to use asynchronous code to escape a try/catch block. On day 9 you will learn how to leak memory with closures. On day 10 you will learn how to do unsafe numeric operations with IEEE 754 floating point precision numbers. On day 11 you will learn that the pseudorandom generator in JS is VM specific and may not be secure. On day 12 you will learn to leak memory by binding functions. On day 13 you will learn to add timeouts to asynchronous operations so they don't last forever. On day 14 you will learn what the floating point epsilon is and how number comparisons are unreliable.

k2052 9y ago
wow you must be fun at parties! (that is mostly just a pun on your username not meant to convey lots of snark) anyways lol some of that is too real jokes aside I think web development has come a long way and JS gets a bit of a bad rep. Full stack JS is insanely productive as a stack when you consider what you can build with it. It might be buggy and make you say "wat?" a lot but in exchange you can build insanely complex apps in timeframes that used to be the stuff of dreams. Granted many times what we build has no need to be so insanely complex, but when we really need it JS is there to make complicated things just magically easy to build.
- partycoder 9y ago
  I think all technologies have sharp edges somewhere, and the way to stay afloat in this business is staying alert. Testing assumptions help, be it through quick REPL experimentation or a unit test. JavaScript has some bad fame around unintuitive behavior but you can find these styles of issues in most languages. A random example: Scala. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiJycy6dFSQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiJycy6dFSQ
- PerfectDlite 9y ago
  > It might be buggy and make you say "wat?" a lot but in exchange you can build insanely complex apps Insanely complex apps on a buggy foundation? What could possibly go wrong...

TheAceOfHearts 9y ago

IMO, continuing to use the ES6, ES7, ES8 naming is probably going to end up confusing more people. I thought renaming ES6 to ES2015 was a bad idea, since it was already widely used. It would've been better to make the change after ES6. However, going forward, wouldn't it be better to follow along with the ES{YYYY} convention? For anyone interested in learning about all these newer JavaScript features, I'd highly suggest checking out the JavaScript books by Dr. Axel Rauschmayer [0]. All the books can be read freely, although I'd strongly encourage you to buy em if you find em useful. Before reading Exploring ES6, I thought I knew everything about ES2015, but skimming through it I found tons of things I hadn't been aware of. His books are the gold-standard JavaScript reference. [0] http://exploringjs.com http://exploringjs.com

noir_lord 9y ago
Thank you! I'd seen these posted before and remember thinking how good they looked and then promptly forgot enough I've not been able to find them again.

rckungdu 9y ago

Maybe they should "get good" at learning how to format their website for mobile. Fail!