Six Words

Why anyone can be a programmer

Programming is easy.

There, I said it. I’ve been hiding that secret for years. And now that I’ve let the cat out of the bag, the cabal of software developers which secretly run the internet are shitting in their robes.

How quickly could a person learn to program? Well, here is a list of all the reserved keywords in JavaScript:

break, case, catch, continue, debugger, default, delete, do, else, finally, for, function, if, in, instanceof, new, return, switch, this, throw, try, typeof, var, void, while, with

Take 5 minutes to memorize that. You are now a JavaScript developer. To be honest, one does not even need to memorize the entire list. In the almost 12 weeks I’ve been a PSD (professional software developer), I’ve never once used the following:

break, catch, continue, debugger, default, delete, do, finally, in, instanceof, new, throw, try, typeof, void, while, with

That leaves nine keywords to remember:

case, else, for, function, if, return, switch, this, var

Now keep in mind that switch statements are essentially just like if / else, so there is no need to memorize them. And the var keyword is completely optional in JavaScript.

else, for, function, if, return, this

Six words. That is the entire grammar behind the incredibly rich and complex lingua franca of the internet.

Google, the Facebook, YouTube, iOS and every other website you’ve ever visited are nothing more than those 6 simple words, repeated over and over again, billions of times, and coiled into a double helix (the most efficient compression algorithm nature has ever developed.) The literal DNA of the internet.

Programming is easy.

Nicholas Ortenzio has been called the “Noam Chomsky of JavaScript”

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