Book Image

Professional JavaScript

By : Hugo Di Francesco, Siyuan Gao, Vinicius Isola, Philip Kirkbride
Book Image

Professional JavaScript

By: Hugo Di Francesco, Siyuan Gao, Vinicius Isola, Philip Kirkbride

Overview of this book

In depth knowledge of JavaScript makes it easier to learn a variety of other frameworks, including React, Angular, and related tools and libraries. This book is designed to help you cover the core JavaScript concepts you need to build modern applications. You'll start by learning how to represent an HTML document in the Document Object Model (DOM). Then, you'll combine your knowledge of the DOM and Node.js to create a web scraper for practical situations. As you read through further lessons, you'll create a Node.js-based RESTful API using the Express library for Node.js. You'll also understand how modular designs can be used for better reusability and collaboration with multiple developers on a single project. Later lessons will guide you through building unit tests, which ensure that the core functionality of your program is not affected over time. The book will also demonstrate how constructors, async/await, and events can load your applications quickly and efficiently. Finally, you'll gain useful insights into functional programming concepts such as immutability, pure functions, and higher-order functions. By the end of this book, you'll have the skills you need to tackle any real-world JavaScript development problem using a modern JavaScript approach, both for the client and server sides.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)

Clear Naming

One of the easiest ways to make code more readable is clear naming. Make using variables and functions as obvious as possible. Even on a one-man project, it's easy to come back to your own code after 6 months and have trouble remembering what every function does. When you're reading someone else's code, this is doubly true.

Make sure your names are clear and pronounceable. Consider the following example, where a developer has created a function that returns the date in yymm format:

function yymm() {
  let date = new Date();
  Return date.getFullYear() + "/" + date.getMonth();
}

When we're given the context and explanation of what this function does, it's obvious. But for an outside developer skimming over the code for the first time, yymm can easily cause some confusion.

Vague functions should be renamed in a way that makes their use obvious:

function getYearAndMonth() {
  let date = new Date();
  return date.getFullYear...