JavaScript, Unleash Its Full Potential
18 Jan 2023
First exposure to JavaScript
My first exposure to JavaScript was while working at the Pacific Health Analytics Collabrative. We had no webdevelopers and were tasked with implementing the Hawaiʻi Behavioral Health Dashboard (HBHD). My task was to write the back end JavaScript for the dashboard. During this experience I did not under go formal training with the language and at the time only had worked in the programing language/statistical package R.
What’s new?
Now after completing the Basic JavaScript and ES6 modules on freeCodeCamp I have gained a new understanding of JavaScript. Not only was the course a good refresher of syntax but I also learned new things such as arrow functions which allow for a more compact alternative to the traditional function. However, they do include there own deliberate limitations and it is important to know those such as, they should not be used as methods because they do not have bindings to this, arguments, or super like traditional functions.
Knowledge is power
One thing I have noticed programming is that knowing the quickest way to solve a problem with the language you are working with is important both in terms of time efficiency and and in readability of your resulting code. For example when I was first working with the Python Pandas library I did not know of the groupby function available for data frames and wrote many long functions to facilitate this function, which were both hard to understand and less flexible than the Pandas groupby function. Having a strong knowledge of the features that the language you are working with has is necessary in order to be an efficient programmer.
JavaScript capabilities
During my work on the HBHD there was a time where I was working with a window in the page that would display a different PowerBI dashboard depending on user selection. I was fairly new to programming at the time and remember wishing I could return a function from another function to solve the problem I was working on. This is indeed a capability of JavaScript and one of the features that makes it unique. Also during the development of this dashboard I had to learn how to work with apsyncronis functions which is a feature that makes JavaScript perfect for web applications.
Unleash JavaScript
JavaScript’s versatility and uniqueness is part of what has made it one fo the core technologies of the internet. However, harnessing the full potential of JavaScript requires a knowledge of it’s capabilities and features. The language is only as strong as the programmer.