Yeah, most of our curriculum uses regular old matplotlib. We only use this technique specifically in our D3 curriculum. In general I can't think of many use cases where this is actually better than just having a couple of files, aside from instructional ones.
IPython itself is a REPL with many, many convenience and magic functions, auto-completion, etc... If you write any amount of python, it's hugely useful!
Then, there are IPython Notebooks, which give you the HTML, cell-based frontend for executing code.
Jupyter is the v2/generalization for both of these things - there is the Jupyter shell, which is a plugin-friendly REPL, and Jupyter notebooks, which allow you to run code across a variety of langauges. AFAIK so far, you can only run one language per Jupyter notebook (though having dug around the source code, the possibility for multiple languages on a per-cell basis is very much there).
I still find myself using IPython and Jupyter interchangably, which probably doesn't help the confusion.
i'd be curious to hear others' opinions, but it seems to me JS isn't the sort of language that one wants to master in itself. it's very much a language defined by its use cases.
then again, i'm just trying to become an all-around better fullstack developer for my current employment situation - so i'm mostly using (and pull-requesting) frameworks rather than writing my own
given this perspective, i'm much more interested in the entire [and rapidly expanding] toolchain for modern js development - and learning the language's esoterica [and i am the sort of person who takes pleasure that stuff] as i become an all-around better js dev
Frameworks change very often in JS land. Understanding the fundamentals of a language very well will give you a great productivity boost even if you're writing Angular/Backbone/Knockout/Aurelia/React/Flux/JSMVC/whatever_framework code all day.
This book isn't about the edge cases of how `==` works or how `>` works when comparing objects of different types. It's about the fundamentals of the language and the idioms and how to write effective code using them.
If you already know JS very well you can skip it or skim it - but if you're a 'framework developer' as a reader I guarantee that it will be worth your time. If your JS is already very good - you might want to consider spending your time learning another language or technology rather than being "more great" at JS unless you want to get involved in the specification process.
> but it seems to me JS isn't the sort of language that one wants to master in itself
Well, depends how you define "master". To become a leading expert on it would mean taking time away from other skills, which probably wouldn't be wise. But if you're using JS quite a lot then learning it to an arbitrary level, let's say 80% of "master", well, that probably would be a good shout.
I suppose it depends on your skillset projection, do you see yourself spending a lot of the next five years with JS? If so, invest now in personal development. If not, maybe skim read it.
The proposition that I approach JS from, including my writing of these books, the JS workshops I teach, my OSS work, etc, is this:
If you're going to make JS your primary language that you write on a daily basis, doesn't it make sense to invest more time into learning it than just whatever you might accidentally pick up through trial-and-error?
Most developers in most other languages do tend to take formal learning of the language, to a deep extent often, a more serious task, but with JS it seems many developers just kinda get whatever they get along the way.
I have found that approach to be good at getting and keeping yourself employed, but bad at giving you any confidence that you actually know what's going on. If you aren't really sure exactly why your code works, my theory is that you'll never know exactly why your code doesn't work either.
I'm just trying to provide resources for developers who want to take learning JS seriously, and challenge "all" of us to ask, "just how much DO I know JS?" The rest is up to you. :)
This is so true. I was really surprised not to find more posts like these, because working on your own car is very fun, gets you away from the computer for a bit, and definitely embodies the DIY mentality most of us on this site have.
That said, if you're in the market and inexperienced [or maybe even experienced], take a prospective car to a professional mechanic. Don't buy a junk car and expect to be able to fix everything yourself, unless you want a fun side project which will require a ton of man-hours [and more money than you'd expect] to complete. But on the overall, doing your own maintenance and fixing smaller problems you encounter [timing belt issues? no biggie!] is very very enjoyable.
Yeah, most of our curriculum uses regular old matplotlib. We only use this technique specifically in our D3 curriculum. In general I can't think of many use cases where this is actually better than just having a couple of files, aside from instructional ones.