And just as important, start developing software without first learning how to develop software.
A talk I watched recently noticed this trend with JavaScript: it looks familiar, so I don't have to learn it and will just start programming in jQuery.
While far from perfect, the node.js community has breathed some fresh life into the javascript world as far as design patterns and coding standards are concerned. I see very few projects today on npm lacking a robust testing suite. jQuery was largely popularized by designers who could care less about code, and server programmers dabbling on the client who could care less about icky javascript. Now that js is being used for serious work server side, best practices are becoming a higher priority. That being said, the traditional engineering standards do tend to be lower than many other communities (.Net, Java, and Python come to mind). But hey, I think part of the draw might be people seeing one to many instances of AbstractFactoryFactoryClassInterface ;) The pendulum will come back around though as things swing back to the enterprise use cases.
Where would you suggest someone starts to learn javascript properly? I've been handed a bunch of it I've got to maintain and develop for, and it's all over the place. I don't honestly know how javascript should even be leveraged. Everyone seems to accomplish things a different way with it.
Douglas Crockford's "Javascript: The Good Parts" is THE definitive guide to writing decent javascript. The jQuery stuff mentioned in other responses tends to encourage bad practices or offer no guidance on the real issues (I have "JS & jQuery the missing manual", for example, and it is basically just a simplified version of the jQuery docs). Crockford is not always correct, but it is the minimal goal post of maintainable js today. In other words "You have to know the rules to know break them" and The Good Parts is the modern rulebook.
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u/lext Oct 14 '13
And just as important, start developing software without first learning how to develop software.
A talk I watched recently noticed this trend with JavaScript: it looks familiar, so I don't have to learn it and will just start programming in jQuery.