JavaScript is just plain fun.
So, along with many other developers about 5 years ago, I hated JavaScript. I thought it was a clunky, haphazard language that for some terrible reason was being included for client-side scripting in almost every browser out there. I thought it was crazy. And I despised JavaScript for years, until...
- Node.js
- jQuery
- jQuery-ui
- jQuery-validate
- Knockout
- Jasmine
- Ajax
- JsRender
- The list goes on and on, I can't possible put all of the good stuff on this post. It's supposed to be an overview anyway. I'll pick on my favorites in due time, I'm sure.
These frameworks/libraries/tools/etc. have made JavaScript the most fun I have had writing code in a long time. I was a huge back-end guy. I liked the meat of the applications that I was working on. Now, I find myself veering toward more focus on the front-end development. How did this happen? I hated JavaScript, hated the front-end interactions and design. Now, I love it. Why?
JavaScript (and the libraries out there that sit on top of it) provides so many opportunities that it's impossible to ignore it. It's impossible not to get interested. Very interested. And now I find it impossible not to play with it. It's so incredibly flexible and I can essentially do anything with it. That's a huge power for a developer to wield. It creates a magnetic pull toward JavaScript that is just beyond my ability to counter.
In the near future, I'm going to write a (potentially multiple) posts on my favorite new libraries in the world of JavaScript. I'm staying away from the Node.js world for the time being, even though it is extremely hot at the moment. It's still getting its footing in the market, and I want to watch it for a little while. "See where everything lands", so to speak. I'm not going to delve into jQuery, for obvious reasons. Everyone has already done that. I don't want to reinvent the blog post wheel, here. We're going to start with JsRender. It's still in beta at the moment, but this library is going to attract JavaScript devs the way salmon attract bears. It will likely become the new jQuery Templates plugin. The jQuery team decided not to take the templates plugin past beta, and they're looking to put those eggs into a new basket. According to Boris Moore, that basket is likely to be marked 'JsRender'. I'm expecting even greater things from this library, and there's a lot of good stuff already there. We'll dig into it all in depth next time. Hang in there, all!
