5 JavaScript blogs for curious minds

#javascript

Cover image by bruce mars on Unsplash

Introduction

JavaScript is arguably the most popular programming language with tons of libraries and frameworks that aim to ease the life of developers but still, you might find yourself in a situation when you really want to know how and why a piece of code works.

This curiosity will take you a step further in mastering the language.

Nicholas C. Zakas

@slicknet

The most common question I get is, “how can I be as good at JavaScript as you?”

I’ve finally distilled my most common answer into two words: be curious.

00:36 AM - 08 Jan 2020

Curious in the tweet above is when you decide to take a piece of code apart to figure out how it works or you just want to know how it works under the hood. "Under the hood" as in how JavaScript interprets the code.

The following blogs should be of help when you decide to go down that path. The blogs are ordered based on the level of complexity of their content — from beginner-friendly to experienced level.

5. Flavio Copes

Flavio Copes is a developer, he writes about JavaScript frameworks from ReactJS to VueJs but still covers some JavaScript fundamentals. An example is a post on How to replace white space inside a string in JavaScript or this post on How to check if a date refers to a day in the past in JavaScript.

4. Xah Lee

Xah Lee focuses on programming tutorials but his content requires previous programming experience. The linked article above is a series of articles that covers JavaScript in-depth.

3. Mathias Bynens

Mathias is a developer at Google. He works on Chrome DevTools and V8 engine.

His blog articles are mostly about JavaScript engines. An example is this post on how JavaScript optimize prototypes.

2. Dmitry Soshnikov

Dmitry Soshnikov is a software engineer interested in learning and education. He blogs on the topics of programming languages theory, compilers, and ECMAScript.

His articles are superbly useful for anyone interested in the internals of JavaScript. Most notably his ECMA-262-3 in detail and ECMA-262-5 in detail series of articles.

For the ECMA-262-3 in detail articles, you can start with the article on Execution Contexts and for the ECMA-262-5 in detail you can start with the article on Properties and Property Descriptors..

Dmitry also has overview lectures about JavaScript:

You should check out Dmitry's site for advanced articles and videos on JavaScript.

1. Dr. Axel Rauschmayer

Dr. Axel Rauschmayer blogs about JavaScript and most of his content are for experienced JavaScript programmers or a curious mind.

Dr. Axel has written books on JavaScript the recent being JavaScript for impatient programmers and Deep JavaScript: Theory and techniques

There you go, I'll leave you with this tweet.

Nicholas C. Zakas

@slicknet

Don’t leave code that you don’t understand. When something breaks, go deep to understand why. When you copy-paste code, intentionally change something and see what happens. Ask, “why does this work?”

Curiosity is the gateway to the reps necessary for mastery.

00:41 AM - 08 Jan 2020