RNR 151: JavaScript Language Features

React Native Radio

In this episode of React Native Radio the panel discusses JavaScript Language Features. They discuss their uses, which ones they prefer and how they shape the language. Josh Justice starts the discussion with Babel, a transpiling tool. They explain what it is and invite listeners to donate to the project. Josh also explains what ECMAScript is.

Next, they discuss arrow functions, explaining what they are used for. Arrow functions clean up code and encourage clean programming. They also help with “this” keyword binding. The panel discusses the class keyword, and how it made its way into JavaScript. They discuss class features, class properties, and private fields.

Though it is a bit of a controversial topic right now the panel discusses the keywords for declaring a variable, var, let, and const. They share thoughts on the controversy and their preferences. ESLint and Prettier are recommended. They compare promise and async-await. Jamon Holmgren shares his experiences from the time before promise and async-await.

The panel discusses destructuring and shares experiences from their own work. They discuss property value shorthand, a feature they use every day. Rest and spread are considered. Jamon brings up string literals, proxies, and decorators. They end by discussing the value of learning new languages.

Panelists

• Josh Justice

• Jamon Holmgren

Sponsors

• G2i

• Infinite Red

• CacheFly

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Links

• https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode

• https://dank.sh/

• JS Private Fields and OO Design

• On let vs const

• Promises for asynchronous programming

• Feature watch: ECMAScript 2020

• Gluegun

• Property value shorthands

• https://www.facebook.com/ReactNativeRadio/

• https://twitter.com/R_N_Radio

Picks

Josh Justice:

• Donate to Babel

• https://overreacted.io/

Jamon Holmgren:

• https://academy.infinite.red/

• Beginning Machine Learning with TensorFlow.js