So my foray into Android was pretty short-lived. Turns out that it's really difficult to find time to learn a new language when your place of employment has no use for that language. Sure, I could've spent more time learning at home, but, as I don't *need* to learn Android, it was never high enough on my priority list to actually sit down and do it.
So, it's on to a "new" language: JavaScript.
Now, I put "new" in quotes because I already "know" JavaScript -- at least I thought I did. After all, JavaScript was a huge part of my job description at Shutterfly when I was hired here 5+ years ago. However, there were so many advances in JavaScript and its use during the past 3 years that I've spent writing Flex code, that I feel like I don't know JavaScript anymore. To put it into perspective, I've never used JQuery, and that puts me into the "elementary" level of JavaScript coding by today's standards.
When I told some colleagues that I want to learn JavaScript, it was recommended that I learn CoffeeScript instead. While I initially rebuked, because why learn B when you're trying to learn A, some good points were made: most significantly the point that CoffeeScript translates *directly* to JavaScript, and can help you learn the "correct" ways to write JavaScript, without having to suffer through all of the "wrong" ways.
So I'm off to learn CoffeeScript using a screencast from PeepCode at https://peepcode.com/products/coffeescript/. PeepCode, unfortunately, is not free.
I'll also be referencing the O'Reilly book, JavaScript: The Good Parts, which can be downloaded for free at http://it-ebooks.info/book/274/.
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