Javascript Resources

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

More Advanced JavaScript

Online playpens

Online resources:

Books

Selected Blog Posts and Fun Tools

Cool Technologies

Time Lines

Tables

Random Numbers

Especially Laplace distributions...

Probability distributions for JavaScript:

Comments on how random numbers work in web browsers:

Graphing: