Map, filter, and reduce are great, but the simple for loop is still a great tool for JavaScript programmers — I’ve read a lot of articles lately that recommend that developers “stop using for loops” in favor of more specialized looping techniques like map, filter, reduce, forEach, etc. I agree with this recommendation to some extent. …

A critical distinction between immutable and mutable data — All data types in JavaScript can be put into one of two categories: primitive values and object references. Primitive values and object references behave differently. This difference in behavior affects how variable assignments are made, how equality operators get their results, and how JavaScript programs run in general. Understanding the…

How simple addition can misfire and break JavaScript applications in ways you might not expect — Like most programming languages, JavaScript has a + operator that can be used to perform addition. Unlike other programming languages, however, the operator also serves a second purpose: string formatting. This piece explores how the + operator works, and how it can misfire and cause bugs if you aren’t careful…

Leaving them out looks pretty, but it could break things — When I first started writing JavaScript I thought that semicolons were mandatory. I was learning about jQuery at the time and all of the documentation I was reading showed a semicolon at the end of every statement. I had a bit of background in some other programming languages and this…

8 tips for breaking through roadblocks as a programmer — Programming is hard. The ability to translate an idea into code isn’t something that comes naturally to most people, and sometimes we get stuck. Even after coding for years, you will still hit roadblocks regularly. …

4 other ways of handling conditional logic in your code — “To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail” — Abraham Maslow I like to think of conditional logic as the bread and butter of software. It gives developers the power to build things that are interesting, useful, and fun. The most popular way of handling conditional logic…

Introducing Sets, the ES6 data type you didn’t know you needed — The Set object type was introduced in the 2015 ECMAScript specification and is ready to be used in Node.js and most browsers. Sets are a lot like Arrays, but a bit different. This article explores these differences and explains when one should be used over another. Let’s take a look. Sets, the New Kid on the Block …