Is JS really the best programming language

Posted by Sim Greenbaum on January 12, 2020

Well, I think the jury is still out on the one , only time will tell for sure. Javascript was created in 1995 by Brendan Eich for Netscape Communications and has a very long history and I won’t bore you with all the details. What is important to know is javascript has become a language that is both Object-oriented and functional programming. This might make it more powerful but also harder to understand the many concepts behind the language.

## Prototypical inheritance vs class In Ruby, we create a class think of it like a blueprint and methods are different actions that the object can do. The only way to create an object is by creating an instinance of the class.

Our map

class House
  def initialize(name)
  end
end

Create the object House.new('gracie mansion')

However in javascript even though now we have classes they are very different a class is really a misnomer as it really is just a bunch of key-value pairs bundled together; we can just us the {} syntax.

In javascript you are creating an object that gets its prototype inherent from a prototype to think of is as a father-son relationship. It will form a link to the main object. See below how our house proto Object() meaning its prototype point to the javaScript Object(). This is really confusing at first but it is essential to understand the working of the language.

let house = {house:'gracie mansion'}
{house: "gracie mansion"}
house: "gracie mansion"
__proto__:
constructor: ƒ Object()
__defineGetter__: ƒ __defineGetter__()
__defineSetter__: ƒ __defineSetter__()
hasOwnProperty: ƒ hasOwnProperty()
__lookupGetter__: ƒ __lookupGetter__()
__lookupSetter__: ƒ __lookupSetter__()
isPrototypeOf: ƒ isPrototypeOf()
propertyIsEnumerable: ƒ propertyIsEnumerable()
toString: ƒ toString()
valueOf: ƒ valueOf()
toLocaleString: ƒ toLocaleString()
get __proto__: ƒ __proto__()
set __proto__: ƒ __proto__()

All the best,

Simcha Greenbaum

www.simchagreenbaum.dev