JavaScript has been a growing topic in the WordPress ecosystem for almost as long as it has existed, but a few recent events are forcing people to pay attention with even more urgency. First, in the last few years JavaScript has gotten ever more important to the topic of web development in general for reasons of user perception of speed, application richness, and more.
Closer at hand, in December WordPress 4.4 came out, which incorporated the first half of the long-coming JSON REST API. (JSON, not coincidentally, stands for JavaScript Object Notation.) And at WordCamp US that same month, Matt Mullenweg, WordPress’s BDFL (benevolent dictator for life) challenged the community to really learn JavaScript in the new year.
I’m not an expert on all things JavaScript. I don’t have a dog in the fight about which framework or library is currently the best and I won’t talk your ear off about any corner of the ecosystem. What I have to offer, though, is a fairly nuanced perspective about a lot of different facets of the complex and difficultly ambiguous task of “learning JavaScript” as someone some distance through the (incompletable) process. Whether you’re sure everyone should be using React today or just think you’ve maybe heard of JavaScript before, I think we’ve got something for you.
JavaScript is Just Another Programming Language
I’ve given a talk a lot in the last year — slides here — about WordPress. One of the points I make is that four languages go into WordPress: CSS, HTML, JavaScript, and PHP. They all have some important stuff in common:
- A defined syntax which relies on English keywords to tell the computer what to do
- The ability to control behavior and presentation on a computer by changes to text files containing the English keywords and a variety of other symbols
HTML and CSS are declarative languages. PHP and JavaScript are both logic programming.
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My husband the C#/.NET developer insists that it’s not a “real” programming language unless you have to compile it. 😉 Me, I’m trying to convince myself that if I can learn Greek, I can learn JavaScript, at least well enough to build WordPress themes.