Modern JavaScript

About Modern JavaScript

Ever get the feeling you’ve woken up and everything’s different? If you’ve looked at modern JavaScript, you may feel like you woke up in a new world where nothing’s the same.

Yesterday, you were tweaking a simple jQuery accordion. Today, you look at some JavaScript code and the ubiquitous jQuery $ operator is gone. In its place are lots of strange dots (...) and strange symbols (=>) (the spread operator and arrow functions, as you’ll soon learn). Sure, some things look familiar, such as class, but even that seems to be unpredictable (where are the private methods?).

Are you perplexed? Maybe a little excited? Well, I have good news for you: Everything has changed for the better.

When the ECMAScript 6 spec was released—ES6 for short—JavaScript code changed dramatically. The changes were so substantial that after reading this course you’ll be able to tell at a glance which code was written with pre-ES6 syntax and which code was written with post-ES6 syntax. JavaScript now is different. Modern JavaScript is any code composed with post-ES6 syntax.

Modern JavaScript is a pleasure to write. I’m a long-time unrepentant Java- Script fan, but I’ll admit that I found the old syntax a little clunky at times, and it was pretty hard to defend. Modern JavaScript is better. But it’s changed significantly, and catching up can be hard.