Meta-Diskussionen

A blog about (mostly) computery things

A new crop of tools is helping developers build web UI components on the backend—no JavaScript required!

Yesterday, I got an email from a newsletter subscriber asking: What’s the best way to practice JavaScript? There’s no one right way to learn JavaScript. But after teaching it for a handful of years now, I have found some trends and common approaches that make things easier for a lot of students. Let’s dig in! Lean into your learning style Some folks learn best by reading, others from watching videos, and others from just diving in and trying a bunch of stuff until things click.

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of chatting with Chris Bongers about how I became the vanilla JS guy. We talked about how I got into web development after years as an HR professional, how I made the career switch, the viability of CSS as a career path, and why I got into JavaScript. We also talked a fair bit about the value of sharing everything you learn, and the power of daily writing.

For years, a trend in our industry has been to build single-page apps, or SPAs. With an SPA, the entire site or app lives in a single HTML file. After the initial load, everything about the app is handled with JavaScript. This is, in theory, supposed to result in web apps that feel as fast and snappy as native apps. Today, I want to explore why that’s nonsense. Let’s dig in!

Yesterday, I wrote about how SPAs were a mistake. Today, I want to talk about how you can build multi-page apps (or, you know, regular websites) that are as fast as SPAs. Let’s dig in! A quick summary The sites and apps I build are absurdly fast. They load nearly instantly. Even on spotty 3G connections on the other side of the world, where many of my students live, things still load really quickly (like, 3 seconds or less fast).