I'm in college, I run an entrepreneurship organization on campus, work full-time at a startup, and I'm doing a side project for fun.
Here's my only complaint, to fellow people who work a regular job or startup AND a side project: don't chunk all of your work into the weekend. Try to at least see your code every day, otherwise it's like coming back from a week-long vacation and not remembering your code very well. Ever stare into the sun and try to get around in a dark room? It's like that.
This past week has been particularly bad because we're doing a push on the product and I've had to do some hiring, but usually I'll try and at the very least look over my code every night so I can keep it fresh in my mind (which keeps my productivity just as high).
And wow, I can relate to this:
"All the engineers kept notebooks, of course. Blogs. They'd write frustrated entries, only to have massive elated breakthroughs the following day."
As for the recommendation to learn native JS: I suggest you instead take the route of learning jQuery. Say goodbye to cross-domain, cross-browser, xmlhttprequest issues. Selectors, manipulation, AJAX, traversing, CSS, effects, it's all there and it works really well.
The idea of making sure to keep your side project's code fresh in your mind is a really excellent one! One of the hardest problems with side projects is being forced to neglect them long enough that it's painful to dive back in.
> As for the recommendation to learn native JS: I suggest you instead take the route of learning jQuery. Say goodbye to cross-domain, cross-browser, xmlhttprequest issues. Selectors, manipulation, AJAX, traversing, CSS, effects, it's all there and it works really well.
This is a good example of how javascript is misunderstood and the reason he suggests doing server side js. If you really dive into javascript, you'll see its true beauty and it has nothing to do with xhr, ajax, css or DOM.
Spend some time in jQuery and you'll see how much faster you can move on the DOM, and with half the code.
I don't mean to say it replaces JS, because you will always have native JS. But I would recommend not doing stuff like DOM and CSS manipulation and AJAX in pure native JS. jQuery extends JS and acts as a compliment, not a substitute.
But, I think we both agree that JS doesn't get anywhere near the credit it deserves.
Oh don't get me wrong, jQuery is my js library of choice when doing client side development (and server side in my own little side project), but the javascript he refers to is much deeper than manipulating DOM. Like he says "Learn JavaScript. Like, for real."
You have to learn the JavaScript core and the native DOM first to really understand the motivations and appreciate the beauty behind a framework like JQuery or Mootools.
