JavaScript Question

StickyMcGinty

I'm just finisged first year CA in DCU, and after a year of learning java i'm looking for somthing to keep me on me toes for the start of college. Javascript is meant to be easy enough, and i want to be able to jazz up my web designing skills anyway, so can anyone recommend a good book.way to get started?

is javascript handy enough to learn? will my previous java experience help me?

seamus

VinnyL wrote:

is javascript handy enough to learn? will my previous java experience help me?

It's a piece of piss. Your java experience won't help except for the general programming skills you've been taught. Java and javascript are not the same language.

Oriel

In my experience, you're best having a need for js, then trying to find the solution to it on the web, and pick it up from there.

dublinguy2004

Greetings,

Javascript is useful stuff. I'm a big fan of php on MySQL backend. Knowledge of HTML and Javascript pops up all the time when doing php/MySQL pages.

I'd go up to your library in DCU. I'm sure they've loads of books on Javascript which is cool stuff. Once you've finished that, I'd get to grips with php/MySQL. It's 100% open-source; this page even uses it!

Tip: Don't go near ASP. JSP may be good for you as you've done Java, but few servers support Java server pages. I'm a php/MySQL hack and once you're a hack, there's no going back!

StickyMcGinty

cheers seamus, would learning it by book or online be easier?

Would JavaScript Definitive Guides by David Flanagan be a good book, someone already mentioned that to me?

cheers for all your help lads

edit: what languages would you all recommend to brush up on, obviously Java, c++, but what else? cheers!

seamus

For College, Java and C++ would be your best bet. If you're interested in web stuff, it can't hurt to have a look at PHP, Perl or ASP either, though my preference would be PHP. Web programming skills can come in very handy in the Project years of Comp degrees.

PhantomBeaker

Yeah, Java, C++ and I'd put down perl if you're going to be using a unix environment in any serious way - it makes automation of some things just SO much easier (I.e. if there's anything you're doing that's fairly repetitive where you think "There's got to be an easier way to do this", there's more than likely a one-liner in perl that will sort it for you, or even if it's not a one-liner, you can probably knock up the script in 5 minutes) PHP is handy for web stuff.

As for books for learning them, my philosophy is "You can't go wrong with O'Reilly" - it's never failed me yet.

I managed to get my hands on an old O'Reilly Javascript book and I never realised how complex JS is. It's fun to fool around with... and if you want to do anything more than an "Under construction" site, you'll probably want to know a bit of it. It can be useful for simple things like pre-caching images. It doesn't have to be all flashy-but-slow stuff. So if you have a bit of spare time on your hands, it doesn't hurt to learn Javascript, but don't think of it as being in the same league as Java, it's not. It's just not. Its objects are essentially just associative arrays, but some of objects rock (like in javascript a function is an object, which makes for some pretty funky stuff... especially as objects are malleable, you can add extra properties (like functions) ad hoc. So if you want to customise your browser, you could create your own functions and add them to the browser object - security rules would apply) Like I said, Javascript is a quirky little language that is quite fun to learn... if as nothing but an interestink toy

Take care,
P.B.

Laguna

Well I'm an ASP man myself, and having looked at JSP pages after having studied ASP first I found it messy and hard to grasp. It's probably just me but I find the VBScript in ASP pages easier to comprehend than JavaScript.

BizzyC

It depends, do you want to do SE or IS?
For SE you'll be doing C, C++, Java, Assembly Language, Prolog(piece of piss) and MIPS Assembly Language.
In IS, I think you'll still need to do C++, and Java....

BizzyC

Laguna wrote:

Well I'm an ASP man myself, and having looked at JSP pages after having studied ASP first I found it messy and hard to grasp. It's probably just me but I find the VBScript in ASP pages easier to comprehend than JavaScript.

I'm the opposite. Having done Java, I found JSP to be extremely easy to understand.

seamus

Having used Java and PHP, I have severe trouble reading ASP. It looks like a hacked-together language to me

Serbian

I started learning Java when I was in college, and moved on to PHP for my final year project. I then needed to learn ASP while in the workplace and I will say that ASP is very easy to come to terms with, but it is a highly frustration language to develop with (I find anyway) due to the fact that it is so limited.

Things that are really simple in PHP (particularly advanced date formatting) can be a pain in the ass in ASP. Also, the fact that you have to pay for many of the add-ons for ASP really counts against it. PHP will come with many free extensions, and it's possible to find an extension to do virtually anything online.

I had to look at some JSP code a good while back and I think I looked like this most of the time: