Making JS More Learnable

Transcript

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   Making JS More Learnable pamela fox @pamelafox pamelafox.org Monday, December

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   When did you learn JS? SURVEY! Monday, December 2, 13

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   The Path of Learning JS variables loops arrays objects prototype

   mix-ins libraries DOM futures generators closures Beginner Expert with Monday, December 2, 13
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   Should more people learn JS? Monday, December 2, 13

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   The Ubiquity of JS Monday, December 2, 13

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   The Ubiquity of JS web server hardware mobile games Monday,

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   Learning JavaScript is Hard Monday, December 2, 13

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   How do I know? Online The “Real” World Monday, December

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   Teaching JS Online ACE editor + processingJS Talk-throughs Coding Challenges

   http://khanacademy.org/cs Monday, December 2, 13
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    Teaching JS IRL http://teaching-materials.org Monday, December 2, 13

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    I’m surrounded by JS learners! 162,858 challenges completed 300,000 unique

    programs created 2,600 Members 105 workshops in 2 years Monday, December 2, 13
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    Let’s Make JS Easier to Learn! Language Design → Debugging

    → Documentation Monday, December 2, 13
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    Language Design Monday, December 2, 13

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    Language Usability Research http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pane/cmu-cs-96-132.html (A sampling!) •Variables in math very

    different from programming variables •Booleans different from natural language (e.g. inclusive-or vs. exclusive-or) •Arrays start at 0, people usually count from 1 •Variable names and keywords are case sensitive •= is often confused with == •123 is confused with “123” •Some variables are passed by reference, other by value •Having to put “break” in every switch statement causes errors •Unnecessary syntax: a++ and a+=1 http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~NatProg/OldMarch162007/langeval.html https://docs.google.com/document/d/1X_V5b0E4qKeSViZcTvpurLb67NfR5GzTUvnh2zZiaWg/edit?usp=sharing Usability issues for novice programmers: Monday, December 2, 13
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    Language Usability Inconsistency with External Knowledge Monday, December 2, 13

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    Language Usability Inconsistent syntax Monday, December 2, 13

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    Language Usability Non-intuitive syntax Monday, December 2, 13

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    Language Usability Unnecessary syntax (Less is More) Monday, December 2,

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    JS Language Usability? • All of those issues were inherited

    from other languages • JS usability itself is not well researched :-( http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.133.4831&rep=rep1&type=pdf Monday, December 2, 13
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    (How you can) Improve the language http://www.ecmascript.org/dev.php “Development of ECMAScript

    standards is an open process, and we encourage public participation.” Monday, December 2, 13
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    Debugging Monday, December 2, 13

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    JS “IDE”s? Monday, December 2, 13

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    JSHint Plugins https://github.com/SublimeLinter/SublimeLinter https://github.com/sleistner/vim-jshint http://cavewall.jaguardesignstudio.com/2011/11/11/using-jshint-to-improve-javascript-code-quality/ http://rondevera.github.io/jslintmate/ https://github.com/daleharvey/jshint-mode Monday, December 2,

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    JSHint in online tools repl.it jsbin.com Monday, December 2, 13

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    JSHint on Khan Academy if (i == 0) { }

    var i = 2; if (i == 0) { } errors warnings best practices var myName = “spaghetti Monday, December 2, 13
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    Improving JSHint messages rect(193,139,,30); Expected an identifier and instead saw

    ','. I thought you were going to type an identifier but you typed ‘,’! I think you meant to type a value or variable name before that comma? Original Conversational Specific + Actionable Monday, December 2, 13
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    rect(80, 70, 60, 240,); I thought you were going to

    type an identifier but you typed )! → I think you either have an extra comma or a missing argument? var x = 5; x+x=1; Bad assignment! → The left side of an assignment must be a single variable name, not an expression. 140= 141 + 142; Bad assignment! text;() I thought you were going to type an assignment or function call but you typed an expression instead! More Newbie Syntax Errros Monday, December 2, 13
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    (How you can) Improve JSHint https://github.com/jshint/jshint/blob/2.x/src/messages.js •Improve messages •Add more

    specific messages •Translate messages Monday, December 2, 13
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    More linting: “BabyHint” elipse(10, 10, 20, 30); spelling wrong arguments

    ellipse(1, 1, 20, 30, 5); https://gist.github.com/pamelafox/7745401 Monday, December 2, 13
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    (How you can) Improve Linters https://github.com/nzakas/eslint Add babyhint functionality to

    JSHint or ESLint? Monday, December 2, 13
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    The Browser “IDE” Monday, December 2, 13

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    The Browser “IDE” Why is hplogo a global var?? What

    does undefined mean?? But I used the right method?! Monday, December 2, 13
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    Improving the Browser IDE http://anton.kovalyov.net/p/js-typos/ Monday, December 2, 13

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    (How you can) Improve Browsers http://www.chromium.org/developers http://codefirefox.org/ Patch the browser

    itself Make a dev tool plugin http://developer.chrome.com/extensions/devtools.html http://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2009/01/28/how-to-develop-a-firefox-extension/ Write a blog post Monday, December 2, 13
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    Documentation Monday, December 2, 13

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    Where are the JS docs? Monday, December 2, 13

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    (How you can) Improve the docs Mozilla Developer Network Just

    click “Edit” W3schools Click “Report Error” Monday, December 2, 13
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    Let’s Make JS Easier to Learn! Language Design → Debugging

    → Documentation Monday, December 2, 13
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    Monday, December 2, 13