15 Tips To Become A Better JavaScript Programmer

HtmlCssMonk
5 min readDec 2, 2020

By — HtmlCssMonk

JavaScript has quickly become an important language used in many aspects of website development. Whether you are involved in creating websites, or simply improving user experience on existing ones, JavaScript is the boon (and bane, sometimes) of your existence. It is a very sought-after skill in the technical and web development sector, and thousands of graduates or about-to-graduate students can be seen working hard on improving their JavaScript skills.

Although it may look very simple and straightforward to new programmers, it has several features and “gotchas” that may leave you scratching your head, wondering why your code doesn’t work.

Don’t worry! We are here to help you improve your JavaScript skills from scratch. This Article tells you how you can be one step ahead than your fellow web developers and polish your JavaScript better.

Tips to become Better in JavaScript

1. Dive deep into the Basics

Many times it so happens that you are applying the logic with coding but forget that there is an already built-in function for that like slicing an array. Sometimes, you get an error while running the JavaScript code and due to it, many other functionalities are also not working. Just a small colon or inverted commas can cause this.

These things happen due to unclear basics.

A simple loop like for, which or do while is used many times in a single program. Loops are very basic things inside programming. If you are not clear with the looping and other basics, it is really very hard to code and even get a chance to get hired for a company.

It is very important to brush up your basics as they give you a strong base on top of which you can build the complex logic of a solution and strong reputation.

So, Learn and practice the basics !

Learn JavaScript Basics here.

2. Use Object-Oriented Approach

The object-oriented approach is the most famous approach used today in programming. An object becomes a basic entity then. This object is then taken as a base and used to apply properties and functions to the page.

For example, I create an object car. This object can be wrapped with many functions such as color, specifications, price, etc and everything that we do is on this object. We can select a car. Colour (“red”) to change the car color to red. Similarly, we can change the price by car.Price(“50”). An object is a base for everything that you do in the programming language.

So, try to convert your exhaustive code to the object-oriented code in the beginning and practice writing your code always in an object-oriented style. When you will read the code of others, you will be looking at object-oriented approaches all the time. So it is better you have your hands on it if you wish to become a JavaScript master.

3. Understand DOM

DOM or Document Object Model is created of a page when it is loaded into the browser. This has various levels that help to access the various elements easily. Understanding how the DOM works is very important to become a JavaScript master.

JavaScript has the power to change any element inside HTML. It can change your background colour, your font anything. When JavaScript has so much power and is used so intensely inside HTML, knowing what will affect what is a must. As a programmer, you should know how changing child property and parent property simultaneously will affect the overall structure of the page. DOM is one of the basic and most important things for a JavaScript developer and he should be an expert in this.

4. Use Functions To Define Different Modules

A functional approach is a great approach in programming because it divides your program in the modules that work together but is still apart.

Let me take an example to clear it out. There is a function to calculate Root Mean Square of the numbers. For this, you need to square the numbers, take their mean and their take square root of the mean. There are three steps involved in it. Therefore, we can make use of three functions. But see, all these functions are interlinked. The output of one goes to another and we get the final answer then.

Now, let’s say instead of three functions, you are using only one function to calculate RMS using various variables. As you see, the final answer is wrong. It will become really hard for you now, to check where what went wrong in such a big function. Instead, having three small functions will help you analyze quickly.

Hence, use functions to define various modules of the code, even if the functions are small. This tip would work like magic to help you become a JavaScript master.

5. Error Handling

If you are into coding, your code is prone to errors. Normally, if you are working on a big project, errors are a common thing. And they should be. They open other possibilities that you might not have thought about while writing the code. But these errors are needed to be handled correctly or else they disturb the flow of the program.

Now, console.log is a conventional method to log errors. But they are extensive and time-consuming. To handle the errors more efficiently, you can use the Error Objects. An error object looks like,

const err = new Error(‘Please improve the time complexity of the code’)
console.log(err.message) // please improve your code

This gives you the power to display an error message too. You can also use try, catch and finally to apply validations on your code. If an error is found in the code in the try block, you can jump to catch block to either execute an error code or display some message. Finally, block executes the code in all the cases, whether there is an error or not. A sample code is given below:

try
{

//code

}
catch (Exception e)
{

//code

}

finally
{

//code
}

6. Understand The Code Of Others

Reading the code of other developers is a great way of expanding your JavaScript skills. It would be better to see the code of any random problem but it would be best to see the code of a problem you have worked upon. Work on the code whose solution fascinates you like a website. If you like a website and wonder how the developer achieved this, see the code. A problem has different solutions and it is better to know all to learn how to reduce the complexities of the JavaScript code.

No matter how good you start to code in JavaScript, there will always be someone better than you. No matter how great your logic is of a problem, there will always be a better logic for the same problem. And accepting this fact shouldn’t be a problem if you are on the path of becoming a JavaScript master.

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HtmlCssMonk

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