Saturday, March 31, 2012

Introduction

I've pulled down all my old posts and decided to start from scratch. From here I will be posting my thoughts and experiences with the modern javascript world, a place that is evolving so quickly that growing pains are inevitable.

Just two years ago it would be almost unthinkable for most companies to have a developer who just did javascript. Then everyone though of javascript as a way to add functionality to the site through manipulating the DOM. Now we have applications where the site would be impossible without javascript. Because of this there is an explosion of new tools to help us. Already the way we use javascript is changing, and that is before we consider things such as mobile devices and projects like node.js which are bringing javascript server side.

In the next post we'll have a look at where javascript used to be and some of the things that has changed. The next post we'll look more at where we are today and what tools there are for us to use. In the third post we'll look to the future and imagine where javascript will take us. Beyond that I intend to introduce some tools and techniques which should be relevant for the modern javascript programmer. I'll be using a set of tools called the Closure Tools which I'll introduce and show how to use to build modern javascript applications while also giving a few alternatives that are worth looking at.