[Noisebridge WebDev] [Noisebridge-announce] Frontend Web Development, Monday 8pm: Menus and modals

Jeffrey Carl Faden jeffreyatw at gmail.com
Mon Jan 14 16:49:35 UTC 2013


Agreed re: feature testing. It's just not very attractive to say up front that devs need to write tests for everything before they go ahead and program it - and people need to understand what everything means before doing either. But often, when people stick to the frontend, they're often sticking to just HTML and CSS for which it is often overkill to write Selenium tests or whatnot.

Code reuse is of the utmost importance, I agree. "Don't Repeat Yourself" is something I try to drill into the class at least once per session. But teaching about defining proper subclasses and objects that serve one purpose is beyond the reach of most JavaScript projects in general (and, to be honest, I don't understand all of it myself).

Jeffrey

On Jan 13, 2013, at 10:45 PM, Garrett Smith <dhtmlkitchen at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 1/13/13, Jeffrey Carl Faden <jeffreyatw at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi Garrett,
>> 
>> This is a class for beginners getting into web development. I've already
>> taught a few classes on beginner JavaScript and have encouraged good coding
>> along the way, but I can only do so much for an introduction class. I have
>> covered HTML, and learning about how most people in the real world program
>> websites (by using jQuery and its plugins) is important - a newsgroup
>> search isn't going to help most beginners. Additionally, I think API
>> design, feature testing, and even an emphasis on coding style and
>> guidelines, are out of the scope of this class. Introducing these topics to
>> people just learning to code seems to me like it would be overwhelming to
>> most.
>> 
>> I wholeheartedly recommend that you avail yourself as a resource to teach
>> these important, but more advanced, topics. Start a class! The more who
>> contribute, the better.
> Easier said than done, right? I actually designed a class for teaching
> electric guitar improv, but couldn't ever find a place to teach it.
> It's hands-on, so kind of noisy. Designing that course took time, so I
> can definitely appreciate what goes into it.
> 
> I just wanted to offer help for questions, including troubleshooting
> why a piece of code works the way it does, technical aspects of the
> language, how to solve a problem, or other such details.
> 
> IMO Feature testing isn't necessarily an advanced concept, but it sure
> can be involved at times. And even non-programmers can realize the
> benefits to code reuse, which can raise questions about different
> approaches for doing that, the tradeoffs, etc.
> -- 
> Garrett
> Twitter: @xkit
> personx.tumblr.com



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