Re: A Newbie's Must-Have Library

[Andy Dingley]

On 15 May, 04:55, Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_.. [e-mail] e:

Well, in case anyone should need to know in the near future, here are
my recommendations for best beginner's books:

Or in another universe, where things are understood and site code is
stable and reliable, beginners don't even think about reading
JavaScript books until they've written some HTML and CSS.

You need it _VERY_ rarely. Using it without a foundation of good HTML
understanding leads to trouble. Few people can learn both from scratch
simultaneously, so it's useful to really grok the first first, which
means getting some hands-on and actually building content that way.

I write sites that use JavaScript for a vanishingly small proportion
of pages. They just don't need it. I work (for money) on complex web
apps that are built up almost entirely of JavaScript. We don't write
this by hand, because it's impossible to write large amounts of
JavaScript in an efficient manner. This stuff is all generated server-
side by frameworks like JSF & Facelets.

[Prisoner at War]

On May 19, 1:47 pm, joebloe <remid0d...@gma il.comwrote:

>

The reason you write a book is for recognition, or just because you
feel like it. As a matter of personal experience, Effective Perl
Programming got me years of onsite training gigs paying gross in
multiple hundreds of dollars per hour.

Hey, congrats! I've always thought that the reason people write
technical how-to books was the same reason people put up technical how-
to websites: as a kind of calling card, or "interactiv e resume"....

[Prisoner at War]

On May 20, 6:30 am, Andy Dingley <ding...@codesm iths.comwrote:

>

You blame Bush being an idiot on him having learned _Java_?! That's
pretty extreme.

Whot??

I'm just saying that it's probably the Zeitgeist that folks are no
longer required to do the "hard stuff" -- even one of the most
powerful people on the planet! The American voter doesn't do anything
intellectually rigorous him or herself, so naturally s/he doesn't
think to inquire whether a candidate has done it either...that was
Spolsky's point, only as related to CS grads, whereas I'm saying "it's
something in the air" 'cause almost everyone's like that....

[Prisoner at War]

On May 19, 3:40 am, Ben C <spams...@spam. eggswrote:

>

Just to give you an idea of what's possible:

http://www.janis.or.jp/users/segabit...riptMaryo.html

OMG!!! That's **JavaScript**? ????

Hey, what the hell, how come none of 'em JavaScript books cover this
stuff???

I might not need Python for anything after all! ^_^

BTW...how am I supposed to play this thing?? Any keyboard controls??
Everything's in Japanese....

[Prisoner at War]

On May 19, 1:52 pm, joebloe <remid0d...@gma il.comwrote:

>

http://www.janis.or.jp/users/segabit...riptMaryo.html

This is cool, but Javascript is capable of supporting *much* more
complex games than that.

Hey, any JavaScript game-programming books you know??? How cow, and I
thought Ben's little help balloon was cool.... ;-)

>In particular, code that doesn't manipulate
the DOM now runs quite quickly (I mean, with a multiple GHz CPU, how
would it not? There's only so much overhead you can layer onto
arithmetic, strings, and loops), and you can put a whole lot of logic
in 100k+ bytes of minified code.

I never did understand all that stuff about "overhead" (not that I'm a
programmer at all)...**multi-billions** of calculations a second and
we're worried about "overhead"? ??

Also, how you make your DOM updates
makes a big difference. And finally, the next generation of browsers
are going to have much more efficient JS interpreters.

Damn, wish I could follow the conversation... .

Any books on programming JavaScript to do games??

So is JavaScript a "full-fledged" programming language now?? I always
thought it was just a glorified macro for web-browsers, like macros in
word-processors.

[Ben C]

On 2008-05-22, Prisoner at War <pr************ *@yahoo.comwrot e:

On May 19, 3:40 am, Ben C <spams...@spam. eggswrote:

>>

Just to give you an idea of what's possible:

http://www.janis.or.jp/users/segabit...riptMaryo.html

OMG!!! That's **JavaScript**? ????

Hey, what the hell, how come none of 'em JavaScript books cover this
stuff???

I might not need Python for anything after all! ^_^

BTW...how am I supposed to play this thing?? Any keyboard controls??
Everything's in Japanese....

First click on the green writing on the centre left (it says "shortest
clear DEMO"). DEMO is in English.

Then you get taken to another screen full of instructions in Japanese.
Press the big button in the middle with blue writing on it. It says
"Watch the shortest course replay (7317 frames)!".

Now it appears to go back to the main screen, but "Maryo" (which I take
it is the cat's name) runs off to the right and starts dashing through
the level. You're watching a replay of someone who's had far too much
practice.

But now if you click the button in the top left with red writing on it
that stops the replay, and you can actually play the game yourself.
There may some other way in but I haven't found it.

Use the arrow keys or S,F,E,D for left right up and down (up to climb
things, down to go down pipes or to duck).

SHIFT or SPACE is jump. Ctrl is the button for running fast and throwing
fireballs (if you manage to get your hands on a flower).