Book Image

The JavaScript Workshop

By : Joseph Labrecque, Jahred Love, Daniel Rosenbaum, Nick Turner, Gaurav Mehla, Alonzo L. Hosford, Florian Sloot, Philip Kirkbride
Book Image

The JavaScript Workshop

By: Joseph Labrecque, Jahred Love, Daniel Rosenbaum, Nick Turner, Gaurav Mehla, Alonzo L. Hosford, Florian Sloot, Philip Kirkbride

Overview of this book

If you're looking for a programming language to develop flexible and efficient apps, JavaScript is a great choice. However, while offering real benefits, the complexity of the entire JavaScript ecosystem can be overwhelming. This Workshop is a smarter way to learn JavaScript. It is specifically designed to cut through the noise and help build your JavaScript skills from scratch, while sparking your interest with engaging activities and clear explanations. Starting with explanations of JavaScript's fundamental programming concepts, this book will introduce the key tools, libraries and frameworks that programmers use in everyday development. You will then move on and see how to handle data, control the flow of information in an application, and create custom events. You'll explore the differences between client-side and server-side JavaScript, and expand your knowledge further by studying the different JavaScript development paradigms, including object-oriented and functional programming. By the end of this JavaScript book, you'll have the confidence and skills to tackle real-world JavaScript development problems that reflect the emerging requirements of the modern web.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)

Higher-Order Functions

Functions in JavaScript are first-class citizens. This means they can be passed as parameter values to other functions, or even assigned to a variable. This is one of the main characteristics that make JavaScript well-suited to the functional style of programming.

Higher-order functions are functions that operate on other functions. They can do this in one of three ways:

  • If the function takes another function as an argument
  • If the function returns another function as its result
  • In both of these ways

In the previous chapters, we've already seen several higher-order functions, perhaps without you even realizing it. Remember the callback functions that get executed in response to DOM events, or the callbacks in Chapter 10, Accessing External Resources, which were called once the AJAX response was ready? These are all examples of higher-order functions since these functions are parameters that are passed into other functions...