Beyond Learning Programming: You Have To Keep Up A Little Bit

And all you need to do to keep up, is buy a heavy paper book, about latest version, and treat it like a newspaper, all 500+ pages of it.

You may learn more this way, as that will take you outside of your zone, and you darn well should get beach sand all over it, it is what we do.

But if you have a wee bit of time, then get mad, because you should use that time in the most uncomfortable way.

I am a big fan of Signals, which are reactive variables, that have a .value for the value, and .subscribe for the change of value.

I add .map, .filter, and other useful transformations, which all take the signal they are attached to.

They subscribe to it, transform the value in some way, and apply it to a new signal that they return, so the process can repeat.

This was my crazy way to plow through RxJs, I learned it so fast, by building my Signals, that I try not to talk about it.

But to stay with it, I set aside my .map() and .filter(), and jumped to another reactive system, ew.

This thing has state, derived and effect, and that just means signal, map, and subscribe.

But the point of it, is not to translate, it is to look anew.

And indeed, effect, is crazy, it forced me to modify the Signal, to make it announce when it is being read.

You don’t use combineLatest here where you merge multiple signals into one, effect, quietly listens to what signals are beings read.

This is a tricky announcement, because if effect contains many signals, many will try to tell effect/subscribe when they changed.

And all at the same time, to keep things clean, you have to use a set, which only allows one of anything.

If many signals change, the set, will only contain one call to execute, effect/subscribe.

But you don’t know when the last signal calls, and you use queueMicrotask a replacement for setTimeout of 0;

When the callstack clears and JavaScript is ready to move forward, the effect/subscribe function will run, and update the UI just once.

The difference between the two, is automatic subscription, inside an effect, you con’t have to specify what signals you use.

You just use them, and effect will take care of everything, effect is probably short for side-effects, or application changes.

Derived, creates a new signal, based on other signals, where effect is just a function that runs when signals inside it change value.

I made my derived based on effect, it also supports automatic discovery and signal subscription.

I loved studying the code, but writing my own implementation required turning my thinking inside out.

I like combining signals, that I spell out one by one, I like all my ducks in proper order.

Effect and Derived, are weird.

This is what happens, programming languages emerge both new and old trends.

And you have to, twist your mind around them.

JavaScript is getting lots of new features, they are very beautiful, and well worth your time and scribbles.

Programming is a life long exploration, it is not complex, because you can reinvent whatever confuses you.

And arrive at the same decisions that the system you are studying made, you learn it inside out.

And the best programs, only exist because they are tiny, so it is about brain gymnastics, not confusion from complexity.

If anything ever challenges you, just ask AI to create a simplified version, and start your journey there.