DEV Community: Anna Traylor

JavaScript Abuse — Article 3. Slice VS. Splice: Another Battle Royale

Anna Traylor — Sat, 19 Aug 2023 18:26:22 +0000

Hello everyone! This post will be super short and quite comprehensive (truly hope so). I was actually selfishly in a need for that post 'cause even if I work with JS all the time, I still look up these two bad boys: slice and splice.

Today we're cooking:

Slice
Splice

The things to consider while working with the aforementioned methods were that both are used on arrays and both remove elements from the array. It is a little bit confusing, huh!? Why have them both then?

Okay, without further ado let's look at the aforementioned methods step by step!

Splice

When I learnt about splice long long time ago I realized that the name of the method reminded me of comma splices from my linguistics past.

Comma splices occur when two independent clauses are incorrectly joined with a comma.

Image Source: Tolchik / iStock / Getty Images Plus

It helped me so much to wrap my mind around the method: aha-ha, so to splice is kinda "to combine".

Splice as an ordinary word is better explained with pizza:

Image Source: Vector Stock

You see how those pizza slices are all different? Like I just replaced all the parts which used to be just Margarita with a crazy mix of flavours from all over the place?

If we look at the content of splice method in a technical way, then here it is:

array.splice(start,deleteCount, el1, el2, ..., el)

our initial array changes
start is the index at which the array starts ‘splicing’
deleteCount is the number of values to be deleted from the start. If the value is 0, nothing will be deleted
el1 to el are the values that will be added after the start

And now let's splice that pizza! I only will divide pizza in two equal flavours for you to get the idea😉

    let array = ["margarita", "margarita"];
    let splicedValue = array.splice(1, 1, "pepperoni");
    console.log(array); // [ "margarita", "pepperoni" ]
    console.log(splicedValue); // [  "margarita" ]

Look! We changed one pizza part from margarita to pepperoni!

Slice

Slice is so popular that it's got its own page on wiki!

Image Source: FreePick

Oh no, that pizza's slice is being taken away! Let's see how it works in a code!

array.slice(start, end)

returns a new array of elements
start is the index at which the array starts slicing
end is the index at which the array stops slicing
the value at the last index is excluded

    let array = [ "margarita", "pepperoni" ];
    let slicedArray = array.slice(1)
    console.log(array); // [ 'margarita', 'pepperoni' ];
    console.log(slicedArray); // [ "pepperoni" ]

We didn't change the whole pizza as you see but we still took a slice of pepperoni pizza from our mixed marvel.

Okay, to sum up, I wanted to provide you with some visuals.

Comparison Table

Opt out for now. But can’t wait to see you again soon!

Sources

Wikipedia (Array Slicing):https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Array_slicing
Indiana University of Pennsylvania (Comma Splices): https://www.iup.edu/writingcenter/writing-resources/punctuation/comma-splices.html#:~:text=Comma%20splices%20occur%20when%20two,to%20create%20two%20separate%20sentences
MDN Web Docs (Array.prototype.splice()): [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/splice]
MDN Web Docs (Array.prototype.slice()): https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/slice

JavaScript Abuse — Article 2. Tech Podcasts That Never Get Old. Part 1

Anna Traylor — Mon, 14 Aug 2023 09:23:22 +0000

JavaScript Abuse — Article 2. Tech Podcasts Which Never Get Old. Part 1

Are you a big podcast fan? I’m challenging you to check out the podcasts I’m referencing to here. Which ones are you familiar with?

Hello! Welcome to JavaScript Abuse. Today we’re talking about podcasts out here. I adore podcasts of any kind: language-, health-, science-oriented but mostly I’m of course into IT podcasts. I bet you already have your favorite ones, too.

In today’s article we’ll dive into the stories behind fascinating podcasts people make to bring us so much knowledge and inspiration. Let’s get started.

1. Ladybug Podcast: Nomination Personal Idol

The first podcast on development I’ve ever listened to was Ladybug Podcast. Back then I was still trying to decide what to become. Due to the Ladybug Podcast I learnt HTML by word-of-mouth and started to write code without even looking at the docs. The hosts changed throughout the seasons. First, they had four developers on the podcast: Lindsey Kopacz, Emma Bostian, Ali Spittel, and Kelly Vaughn. Then Lindsey stepped down and a new host was hired: Sidney Buckner. These women are very inspiring. You can find all the information about them on their website.

Some of my personal favorites which I’ve already listened to more than twice are:

2. BaseCS Podcast: Nomination Friendly Intro to CS

The hosts of this gem are Saron, a founder of CodeNewbie, and Vaidehi Joshi, an author and developer. BaseCS is based on Vaidehi Joshi’s blog series with visual schemes and graphs to assist readers with complicated concepts like data structures and algorithms.

I adore Saron’s sense of humor and genuine interest in CS. Vaidehi has a knack for explaining complicated things with allusions and real-world examples. This podcast was finished very logically. Every episode was a puzzle to create a wholesome picture.

A few episodes you can start with (but I suggest taking your time and listening to all of them):

3. Bear Talk Podcast: Nomination My Go-To Tech Podcast in Chinese

Bear Talk(Chinese: 狗熊有话说) is a Chinese podcast about technological updates, opinions on books, and personal improvement tips. The podcast was launched in 2012 and has become very popular since then. Most episodes are in Chinese but you can still find a good chunk of English episodes, too.

The host is Bear Liu, a Chinese UX-designer, living and working in New Zealand as a Product Designer. He has well-thought through opinions on the tech industry and books he’s read. I discovered a lot of wonderful books thanks to Bear. And I should admit he supported me during Covid by his positive attitude, rational opinions, and his ability to think critically. If you speak Chinese or care to find some of his English episodes, I highly recommend checking them out.

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Some of the episodes I like:

4. JS Party: Nomination Festive Celebration of the Web

JS Party is not only about JavaScript. It’s so much more. First, it’s a guild of professional developers:

This podcast is super-interactive, especially with that mix of speakers, hosts, and topics. The shows are different, too. Some of them are technical and deep, others are social and communicative (like interviews or some one-topic conversations), and there are ones which make you laugh, too. Like one of the last episodes of 2022: The spicy React debate show will definitely make you laugh and find a bunch of arguments for and against React, a robust JS library.

The description states:

We’re back with another spicy YepNope debate! This time, Amelia and KBall are arguing that there’s real value to (continue) using React in 2022, while Amal and special guest (and author of the post which stemmed the whole debate) Josh Collinsworth argue that React’s time leading innovation has passed.

Check out one of these episodes:

WTF, JS?
Testing testing 1 2 3 (an episode with Angie Jones (the queen of Java and testing) and Emma Bostian)
A deep-dive on Vite (an episode with Evan You, the creator of the JavaScript framework Vue.js and the frontend build tool Vite)

5. React Podcast: Nomination Fascinating Dev Stories

The podcast is listed as the first one to listen to about React on the official React docs. In the form of an interview with devs listeners learn more about developers’ backgrounds, new React (and not only) features. For instance, Dan Abramov, author of Redux and create-react-app, talks about the future of React in the third episode in 2018, while Tyler McGinnis describes the first few years of React. In one of the episodes Vaidehi Joshi shares her journey with her own BaseCS Podcast which we talked about previously.

Some featured episodes:

6. BONUS: Episodes on Tech from Non-tech Podcasts

There are many podcasts which are made with different goals. They discuss a gazillion things. And oftentimes you can bump into episodes dedicated to some fascinating stories and encompassing your personal scope of interests. Let’s look at some of them.

Lady Startup Stories

I’m linking a conversation with Melanie Perkins, who's a founder of an online design platform Canva. This conversation shows how dreams and hard work go together hand in hand and help to achieve the boldest goals.

Melanie Perkins: Canva Lady Startup Stories

InnerFrench

InnerFrench is focused on French, of course. The host, Hugo, has a tremendous baggage of knowledge in very diverse spheres. In the suggested episodes he provides some background on the tech side of cryptocurrency, potential singularity in the future of humanity, and an idiosyncratic point of view on driverless cars.

Faut-il acheter des bitcoins ?

Vivre avec des robots

Les voitures autonomes

StarTalk

Have you ever heard of Neil Degrasse Tyson, everyone's personal astrophysicist? And his podcast which by the way was launched in 2015? The podcast became a platform for scientists of varios fields and interests who share their experience and expertise. Check out some of the podcasts that might catch your eye as well.

Algorithms and Data with Hannah Fry

The Evolution of Personal Technology with Marques Brownlee

Off the Blockchain with Dr. Sandra Johnson

Thank you for reading my new article from JavaScript Abuse series.

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JavaScript Abuse — Article 1. JS vs. Python: Battle Royale

Anna Traylor — Tue, 08 Aug 2023 21:11:10 +0000

JavaScript Abuse — Article 1. JS vs. Python: Battle Royale

Which language should you learn first? Maybe it should be Python because everyone says it’s easy? Oh, wait, there’s also something like Java or is it JavaScript? Oh, are they different? Of course, I should start with C++ because it’s what THE real programmer would choose?

Table of contents

Intro
Why is Python hard?
The Stories of Python and JavaScript
Outro
Sources

Intro

When you have a buzzing idea to learn how to program in your poor innocent head, you start with such a google search as: “Which/what programming language should I learn as my first” or something from these lines. It’s by far one of the most popular questions asked on the web about programming. How do I know? Statistics, of course. A fascinating tool AnswerThePublic listens to data from search engines like Google. It then cranks out phrases and questions folks are asking around for your input. That’s how I got a beautiful chart with the most popular questions.

After you insert your pressing question you get a result: Python is the easiest language to learn especially if English is your first language. Stop, stop, stop… Then which human language do other programming languages use? Chinese*? I speak Chinese fluently and I checked! Other programming languages mostly use English. Unless it’s some specific language created for narrow purposes.

Let’s take a look at what Python is used for: AI and machine learning, Data Analytics, and Data Visualisation. Does that even sound beginner-friendly to you? Not to me.

Why is Python hard?

Okay, that was a fascinating intro, but let’s get down to business, ladies and gentlemen. I’m not a chauvinist and I’m not saying Python is a bad language to learn. I don’t want to advertise JS either. I want to bring an interesting discussion forward: when have we started to attach qualitative features such as ‘good/ bad’ to a programming language?

IMHO, the question “Which/what programming language should I learn as my first” is just wrong. The first question you should ask yourself is “What am I gonna do with my programming knowledge?”. What do programmers do anyway? Most people respond without blinking that programmers build websites. So, here you are. If you search “What language is used to build websites”, you’ll see that JavaScript is one of the most popular ones. However, you can hypothetically get answers like HTML and CSS... Important! But not omnipotent.

If you search for something like “Why isn’t Python a beginner-friendly language?”, you’ll get a bunch of results which go step by step in the depth of all the inconveniences Python has. But you know, the same goes for JavaScript and for C. Python has an interesting peculiarity with indentation: so you should always be on a look up. JavaScript has some problems with browser support. The browser interpret JavaScript differently in different browsers. As a developer I face it sometimes. Like I can build and debug my app with google chrome dev tools. Consequently, when I check my pages on Safari, they might look different and in a very unexpected way. When I worked with C, for instance, insufficient memory management was definitely quite a tricky issue to be aware of. And so on. I bet all developers face a gazillion challenges in their day to day work. Whether it’s some programming language’s peculiarities or performance, it’s normal.

The Stories of Python and JavaScript

Let’s also look at Python and JavaScript stories. They are quite intriguing. First, which of the aforementioned is the youngest? What do you think? Well, I hope you got it right. I’ll keep it a secret for the time-being, though. Let’s go back to the early mid-1990s. It was an extremely crucial time for the Internet. Key players were Microsoft with its Internet Explorer and Netscape with its Navigator. In September 1995, a Netscape programmer Brandan Eich developed a new language. It was written in the nick of time, in 10 days(!). What a genius, huh?! Originally the name given was Mocha, then it was renamed to LiveScript, and finally the agreement was reached upon JavaScript. If you’re curious about Netscape Navigator’s destiny… Well, it was left unsupported from 1 March 2008. If you wanna have some fun, well, it’s archived and is still available. I’ll share a link in my blogpost notes.

Let’s learn Python background. In the late 1970s BBC aired a show called Monty Python’s Flying Circus. In December 1989 Guido Van Rossum from the Netherlands started to implement a new versatile programming language. It happened to be that Van Rossum really liked that show. This is how Python got its name when it was published later in 1991. And how we kids learn a bit of culture from the 70s. And yes, Python is a bit older.

Python and JavaScript are not alike. They were created in different times by smart people from various countries and for divergent purposes.

Outro

I hope this article was helpful for some people who are struggling with the choice of their first language or maybe it gives some thoughts to more experienced devs.

All in all, the current short first episode(post) is a small introduction to my way of explaining things. In the next episodes we’ll dive deep into topics such as what the heck is Object Oriented JS or Functional JS for this matter; how is it even possible for JS to be used on SalesForce(and what’s SalesForce once again), how 4 plus 2 can give us 42, and much more.

Opt out for now. But can’t wait to see you again soon!

*Funny enough there is a Chinese Python translation. This version uses keywords and built-in identifiers all translated into Chinese. Plus, there’s a language called Wenyan. Apparently this marvel closely follows the grammar and sentence structure of Classical Chinese(the namesake of the programming language). Thankfully, it’s compiled into JavaScript and Python.

Sources:

Sweigart, A. (2020). Automate the boring stuff with python: Practical programming for total beginners. No Starch Press.
Haverbeke, M. (2019). Eloquent javascript: A modern introduction to programming. No Starch Press.