[RESOLVED] Big Picture Question: Javascript in the grand scheme of things for a php/MySQL coder?

Joseph_Sliker

Hi; This is a question for any of you who use Javascript a LOT as well as php...

With all the help I have gotten here over the years, I've gotten pretty comfortable creating MySQL databases and forms ad reports using php to feed and report from my tables.

I've been reading a Javascript book (thinking I might find some stuff that is easier/more efficient to do, using that language.) but so far, I keep thinking "Oh, I could do that with php by (blah, blah, blah) ..." but I suspect this is happening because I am only focused on the general concepts that I already understand.

Are there some things that you think are much easier/more efficient to do with Javascript? What are some things that are difficult or impossible to do with php that you CAN do with Javascript?

Thanks.

dalecosp

Web 2.0 is based on the triumvirate of HTML/CSS, AJAX, and a server-side solution which is often, but not always, PHP/fooSQL.

So, yes ... if you're expecting to stay around and not going to be specialized ... it's become quite indispensable to know some of it. Of course, there are shops where there are enough geeks that you have a server-side guy or two, a front-end guy or two, and so on; but take a look at job postings and you'll see that many of them expect good front-end skills even in those cases. I think that businesses appreciate cross-competencies, and JS is a fairly logical one.

It will really depend on whether you can find a job or not when you need one; if you're lucky, you'll find one doing PHP/MySQL; if you're not as lucky, you'll find one doing PHP/SQL, HTML/CSS, Javascript/Ajax, RonR or Python or whatever you've learned. The reason to learn more languages is so that the periods of job hunting have as little free time as possible between them 😉

Incidentally: it seems most authorities on JS think that the books are of little value:

Douglas Crockford wrote:
Nearly all of the books about JavaScript are quite awful. They contain errors, poor examples, and promote bad practices. Important features of the language are often explained poorly, or left out entirely. I have reviewed dozens of JavaScript books, and I can only recommend one: JavaScript: The Definitive Guide (5th Edition) by David Flanagan. (Attention authors: If you have written a good one, please send me a review copy.)

Of course, that advice might be dated by now; here's the original source of the quote.

Weedpacket

Client-side applications. The modern web browser is an entire computing platform and JavaScript is its native language; the APIs for the browsers' functionality have JavaScript bindings (of course, that's not to say that you can't write the application in some other more apropos language and then translate it to JavaScript; that's how bananabread was created.) Several smartphone manufacturers are basing their app development environment on the same platform.

xerxes

JavaScript and PHP have two different purposes, PHP is a Server Side scripting language, JavaScript is Client Side. Using client side scripting in conjunction with server side you can cut down on round trips to the server. For example, form validation, you could do all this in PHP, but it means submitting the form, checking the submitted data at the server before returning any error messages to the browser, using JavaScript you can do this before data is sent to the server. In addition things like DHTML and Ajax use JavaScript.

As an aside, JavaScript is not that dissimilar to PHP, curly braces, and the extensive use of brackets, double equal signs etc. Contrast that to ASP/VBScript, the first language I learned, which looks nothing like JavaScript. To a large extent, my knowing a fair bit of JavaScript probably made it a lot easier to learn PHP and lately I've been dabbling with C++, my curly brace keys have never seen so much use. :p

In any case, it's definitely worth knowing some JavaScript and I don't think it's going to go away any time soon.

Joseph_Sliker

Thanks for all the replies. I get the server-side/client-side distinction. I am just starting to write some stuff that makes stuff happen in the browser window right on my local machine without need to go back and forth to a server which is pretty cool, but I've got an awfully long way to go. The book I picked up (cheap) is the Microsoft Press "Start Here! Learn Javascript" by Steve Suehring (c. 2012) and am almost through it. I am sure it is a very rudimentary introduction, but I have learned something about distinct Javascript concepts and related terms (ie. what the heck AJAX and JQuery are). But I still have a long way to go.

I was thinking about learning Java, but the more I read, I thought I would be able to comprehend/use Javascript for real projects much more quickly.

I will keep this thread open for a couple more days to see if anyone else weighs in with specific things a person ought to do with Javascript rather than php.

...I also have to improve/refine my understanding and use of CSS which is still kind of a mess for me. Most of the projects I work on really could be best used with the browsers on smartphones and tablets (for folks who have to contribute data from out in the field), but I'm not yet anywhere near ready to attempt to create and deploy stand-alone apps. The phone/tablet browser route seems satisfactory for now.

Joseph_Sliker

xerxes;11027605 wrote:
As an aside, JavaScript is not that dissimilar to PHP, curly braces, and the extensive use of brackets, double equal signs etc. Contrast that to ASP/VBScript, the first language I learned, which looks nothing like JavaScript. To a large extent, my knowing a fair bit of JavaScript probably made it a lot easier to learn PHP and lately I've been dabbling with C++, my curly brace keys have never seen so much use. :p

I noticed that early on in reading the book. It's a double-edged sword though: the curly brackets make me quickly drift back into .php thinking and coding halfway through typing in a statement!

dalecosp

Joseph Sliker;11027611 wrote:
I noticed that early on in reading the book. It's a double-edged sword though: the curly brackets make me quickly drift back into .php thinking and coding halfway through typing in a statement!

I deal with this as well; I've got a thread up in the Echo Lounge here where we're discussing a few things about JS as well. My biggest problem with it is that the community seems different, the thought processes seem different, and the rules are different --- and perhaps the biggest issue --- the community there argues quite a bit about just what, exactly, those rules are. For me, that's a pretty big "no no" for any language, but especially for one that has to be spoken with precise grammar to accomplish a business goal.

I'm getting by with JS, though, as everyone @work seems to think I can do anything they ask ;-) (Not true, fortunately they don't ask much most of the time ...) I've greatly enjoyed seeing the development of a RESTful interface for one of our in-house projects, and look forward to any other "kewl" stuff I can make with Javascript.

Joseph_Sliker

Thanks for all the replies. I actually got something useful to work in JS this morning (once I got reminded that I can't use AND or OR in multi-conditional statements, and that I MUST use && and || instead). Maybe I'm on my way.

dalecosp

How your JavaScript going these days, Joseph?

Joseph_Sliker

Hi! Thanks for checking. I've been away from coding for a while (months of decent weather, plus lots of family demands (and...sadly wasted...political effort)). It feels like I've forgotten most of the Javascript concepts I managed to pick up back when I posted this. However, I'm getting back into it now that we are heading for winter. I just did a couple teeny scripts the other day to update some database record fields but I need to comprehend how to do slightly more sophisticated things than that. I will try to do some rudimentary test pages to show/hide page elements (ie. specific db rows) without needing to load/reload whole pages. I'm sure I'll be back with more questions soon.

dalecosp

Joseph Sliker;11058625 wrote:
(months of decent weather, plus lots of family demands (and...sadly wasted...political effort)).

There's a law of conservation of matter & energy. Nothing is ever truly wasted 😉

Weedpacket

Yeah, but it eventually ends up as useless heat ... :p