Javascript Resources

Why JavaScript?

JavaScript is my recommended first language for aspiring programmers---not Python. The reason is that JavaScript is built into every browser, so no matter where you are or what kind of computer you have, you can start playing with JavaScript. And as soon as you have learned a little, you can do neat things like interactive graphics, extend Google's Chrome Browser, and so on.

Core skills you want to learn:

• JavaScript
• HTML --- the language in which pages are authored
• CSS - Cascading Style Sheets. How to make web pages pretty.
• JQuery - How to use JavaScript effectively.

If you are solely interested in graphics, you might also look at Processing. There are some really good processing books as well.

And if you are looking for playing around with hardware, you might check out CircuitPython.

Recommended JavaScript Tutorials

The most orderly way to learn JavaScript is to simply read the manual on the Mozilla website. There are also tutorials:

• https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript

If you've seen JavaScript but you've never formally learned it, I recommend:

• https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/A_re-introduction_to_JavaScript

There are many online JavaScript tutorials. These all allow you to try out things in your browser directly, and don't require that you create accounts:

• https://www.w3schools.com/js/
• https://www.learn-js.org/
• https://javascript.info/ - The Modern JavaScript Tutorial

Untrusted is a game played in JavaScript. It's designed to teach secure coding and hacking skills. You win the game by modifying programs.

• https://alexnisnevich.github.io/untrusted/

More Advanced JavaScript

Online playpens

Online resources:

• https://codepen.io/
• https://jsfiddle.net/
• https://bokeh.pydata.org/

Books

• https://eloquentjavascript.net/

Selected Blog Posts and Fun Tools

• https://dmitripavlutin.com/how-three-dots-changed-javascript/

Cool Technologies

Time Lines

• https://timeline.knightlab.com/ - Open source JavaScript timelines

Tables

• Datatables (This is the one that I'm using)
  • 5,000,000 rows server-side
  • Example showing jump to row 1000
• Tabulator (This is a little easier to use)
• https://www.sitepoint.com/12-amazing-jquery-tables/
• https://www.jqueryscript.net/table/

Random Numbers

Especially Laplace distributions...

• http://jsfiddle.net/KkDVr/2/ - Noise generation, showing on a canvas
• http://jsfiddle.net/Xotic750/DXXhs/ — Gaussian distribution

Probability distributions for JavaScript:

• http://statisticsblog.com/probability-distributions/#laplace
• https://www.npmjs.com/package/probability-distributions
• https://github.com/Mattasher/probability-distributions

Comments on how random numbers work in web browsers:

• https://bocoup.com/blog/random-numbers
• http://simjs.com/random.html
• http://mathjs.org/docs/reference/functions/random.html
• https://www.filosophy.org/post/35/normaldistributed_random_values_in_javascript_using_the_ziggurat_algorithm/

Graphing:

• http://www.flotcharts.org