My Experience With JavaScript and ICS 314
30 Aug 2022
How JavaScript Compares To Other Languages
At the time of writing this, it’s been about 2 years since I’ve taken a programming class. JavaScript helped refresh my prior basic knowledge about programming such as what variables were, arrays, different loops and overall syntax. Before doing the introduction to JavaScript on freecodecamp, I’ve never used JavaScript before. In previous courses, we used Java and C/C++. When comparing JavaScript to Java, I’d say they’re pretty similar but the main difference that I enjoyed between the two was that JavaScript is more relaxed in terms of syntax and rules however, you can do a lot more in Java due to it being an Object Oriented Programming language while JavaScript is an object-based scripting language. When compared to C/C++, JavaScript is much simpler and easier to use due to the fact that everything is laid out for you and ready to use for the most part while in C you had to import various libraries in order for things to function.
What Makes JavaScript Different?
Even though JavaScript is different from the other languages I’ve used in the past, many different characteristics and concepts carried over from C/C++ and Java. JavaScript still uses arrays, functions, variables, assignment operators. JavaScript, in respect to ES6 introduced a lot of different concepts that I haven’t seen before such as let and const keywords, arrow functions, multi-line Strings, default parameters, and destructing assignment. These were all new to me and took a little bit of time to get comfortable with and understand how to use them in terms of syntax. Even though I haven’t had much experience with JavaScript yet, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience with the language due to the laid back syntax and rules associated with the language which is why I think it’s a good language from a software engineering perspective due to how simple JavaScript is. In my opinion simplicity helps with overall productivity when completing a task.
My Thoughts on ICS 314
ICS 314 was the first time I was introduced to the concept of “Athletic Software Engineering. What I understand from the reading is that Athletic software engineering is basically programming under pressure. In my honest opinion, I dislike this way of teaching because of the anxiety that I get BUT I’m growing to be more fond of it because it helps me overcome my anxiety when faced with problems that require a timely solution. I understand this way of teaching will only force me to become better and actually hone my skills.Right now, I think this style of teaching is stressful but in the end I think it will work out for me. Today we did our first group WOD and I thought it was helpful in order for us to understand how the real WODs would go. I haven’t gone to a practice WOD yet but I hope to attend most of them over the span of this course as they seem very helpful in terms of building up skills for future WODs.