Jozi.JS 2019, 28 Aug 2020

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From YouTube: From A Programming Language to JS - Asimthande Majola

Description

This talk will be about a transition from Dyalog APL to JavaScript. Detailing to weird move from an old but still kicking language to a modern "Here are all the pieces now put them together” language which is JavaScript.

This will include a detail description of what Dyalog is so everyone can get the feel of what I was doing before. Then I will be talking about the languages differences and how JavaScript has made my development workflow so easy. And to close everything off I will be talking about what I'm currently working on and how different the workflow if I did not have JavaScript.

This talk was recorded at the Jozi.JS meetup group on 21 February 2019.

https://www.meetup.com/Jozi-JS/events/257857962/

Disclaimer: The opinions in this talk are those of the individual and do not necessarily represent those of this channel, the meetup group, or it’s sponsors.

A

Hi guys awesome, Sunday Mottola, and this is gonna- be a talk about how I switched from dialog APL to JavaScript and APL. Just stands for a programming language.

A

Apl API was developed somewhere between 1955, so it's really old and dialogue is just a subset of APR, which is still in development and constant updates come through so yeah, so a bit apart, myself, I'm. Actually a self-taught developer, I started programming in grade 12 and then I went tweeting code for in 2017 for like a year, I didn't go out as well as I planned, but I also I married now I'm working at a financial tech company that no one knows off, which is called RIS flow. We specialize in risk management and yeah I.

A

Don't want to talk about that right now. So.

A

So, dialogue, APO I specifically call dialogue, a PR it programming language because, if you've been coding for a while and you step into dialogue, you just realized nothing makes sense, because it's all based of symbols, math symbols and it's a rapist, so it was very I- did an internship for three months where I actually learned the stick book. There was 700 pages for three months and yeah I'm, actually gonna talk about the whole transition from okay. Let me first tell you why our transition from who guys all so nervous but okay.

A

So let's go to this Oh. Do you guys know this meme yeah? Anyone have you seen this mean cool. So what the thing is? Okay, I couldn't get a good resolution for it, but it's just basically showing programming languages in an iceberg. So up there, you have stuff like JavaScript, Python and stuff the high level languages and then, as you go down, you get to the older in lower system. Languages and APL is right about here. So it just shows you that API, it's very old and very weird, so, let's just get into it.

A

So how to speak. Greek, 1 I did tell you, you need symbols, met symbols, usually I'm still going to show you and you read from left to right, which is not what normal programming languages do. Okay, no more foreigners. You go from right to left.

A

You guys want to see this and you need a keyboard because you have to map the symbols to a keyboard. Here you have like a certain number of keys on your keyboard and you need something called a workspace where you do your probe, it's kind of like an IDE, and it saves all your programs in one file yeah. So the symbols, it's all met space. All these symbols are actually there in mats. When you do equations and I can try to explain a few of them.

A

Do you have plus and minus, which is plus and minus.

A

And you have divided n times, which is not like any other normal programming languages. It's actually divided in time from from mats. The slash means something else in dialogue and oh yeah, that circle you have this pi. The Asterix stands for to the power two, and let me pick an interesting one. Okay, things I, don't know what most of the symbols the names of them, but there's this one, which basically counts it's like array length. It counts. All of you like this.

A

If you have an array, it's going to give you the number of how many elements are they and the nice thing about these, that it has usually one symbol, has two different functions: maps to them. So let's say you're gonna use something like like class. You can take class and then give it an array. So I can try and open up a workspace. This is the dialogue workspace. You can take plus.

A

Yeah, you can take Plus given an array. This is how you make an array, and then we just return that, oh, you can take Plus give it another array here and it's going to add all of these numbers in very different I hope you guys can actually see this No. Oh that sucks yeah.

A

This is a very odd language, so you're constantly yeah. This thing is zooming in so I can try using magnifier.

A

This sucks so yeah, can you guys see now yeah, so what this basically does? It takes each number from each array. So it's going to take one edit to one take to edit to take three edit two three, so you have different functions on one symbol, which is the cool thing about this and get out of here.

A

Cool so I told you about reading from left to right. So let's say now: I'm gonna make a example on a sail. Let's say someone says you're going to get 22.5 of 150 from a t-shirts right. This is the mushroom. Now.

A

A

Cool, so what you can I hope so.

A

Now it is so how this works. It will take this 100 and then times it with this in parentheses and then that's how you'd get 15% off. If you were to remove the parentheses, what do we do? We take the hundred times it by 150 and then divided by 22.5.

A

Which, in overwhelming language of start with twenty two point five and go left, so this is something I to adjust to and it took me a very long time getting used to it. You always have to put parentheses every way, so the keyboard, as you can see, these are all the symbols we use. I should have this. You know like large sheets on my desk, so I wouldn't forget. All of these. You also have the language bar, which you guys saw on the workspace.

A

So if you forget them, you can just go click on that language bar yeah, that's the keyboard and the workspace. This is I hate this. To be honest, because you know you can't save your functions in a separate file, everything has to be in a workspace. You can save them in save a file, but that's going to take you a good like 10 minutes and I don't have that time. So this is the workspace.

A

It saves everything you type in you can't clear this out, which is also why I hate it and you have all your settings and thing is up there and you also have a debugger which is I think by far the best debugger I've ever used, but it's useless if I hate that thing, if I hate the workspace right. So ok, so now, I'm just going to show you a different like some examples: differences between dialogue and JavaScript.

A

We can start off with a simple hello world. Oh yeah, this was ok. Dialogue is very deceiving when you starting it off, because everyone starts off with a simple hello world in most languages JavaScript. You know this. It's simple, console.log in dialogue, you just type out hello world. As a string press Enter, you get back a hello world, so yeah and like leg very simple, so it's finally not like first day I was like oh okay. This is gonna, be I'm, gonna Ace this internship a week after yeah.

A

It was a very different story, so declaring variables. This is my thing with JavaScript kind of of dialogue. There's only one way to to declare variable the the arc goebbels. You save Global's in your workspace. You save locals in a function like every way and but that's the only way to decay available and in JavaScript you have constant. You have latent var. You know I've watched a few tutorials on this latent var. It's still confusing me every now and then, though yeah some more mats.

A

So this is where javascript or any other programming languages in the world get crushed, because this thing is so powerful when it comes to mess in the left. You know I could have done more examples on JavaScript, but they all took me like seven slides.

A

Please don't start now, I.

A

Told him buy me a Mac.

A

I just try playing it in and out again.

A

That was a good minute, so I can just start up with this I'm sure you understand the factorial function in JavaScript way. See that you do it you do it recursively, oh, don't do it recursively, but I'm sure. That's like a good for through each lines of code and dialogue is to two characters. That's what you type in and you get back your fat oil. The second one is the area of a circle.

A

As I told you guys, the the square, the the circle thing is tense for pi, so you just say pi of three to the power of two and you get your circle function, another one, the random number generator, which is source, and you just give it a question mark whatever number you want, and we will pick a number from zero to that variable. You take it and the lowest common divisor. This is actually a weird one, because I was a tweeting code and they have this exam stuff.

A

Where this question I think popped up once and altitude in C and I failed that exam so coming coming to dialog and just seeing a weight. This is three characters. I could have passed this if I I had dialogue back then, but yeah. So the dialogue round up dialogue is cool if you're gonna like because and my company we do financial takes.

A

So we work with a lot of numbers, it's cool for that, but now, when you need to deploy an application to someone which is actually usable, that's where the problem starts so yeah why I met? Why am I JavaScript Meetup.

A

Because Dalek GUI is horrible, it's I, don't know why they put that code out there and I. Don't know why they still keep on updating it, but it's still there and I'm gonna show you some examples, so you guys can see, but it's just the worst thing ever so. Oh no one can see this hopeful.

A

This is a slide I.

A

Didn't think about this right, so, okay,.

A

Magnify again,.

A

So yeah, no okay, soku. What this does. It makes a buoy. You know with all this amount of code it you would think something good is happening behind it right, but actually what's happening. Is this three buttons? That's it I had to make this program for my my boss, because she wanted an easel and hast a program where she's gonna give me one excel sheet and then I had to index another excel sheets using the columns from the Nido file. So I made this she loved it I, really hated it and yeah.

A

This is why I doing the transition so now income, JavaScript I, try to include a few means, because dialogue is very boring, so I hope some of you get them so yeah, like JavaScript literally swept me off my feet. I tried to do JavaScript when I was back in Wheaton code. I did it for a day and then I found out that it doesn't have classes and then I quitted.

A

This was before yes, six you have to remember. It did have classes, but it looks very disgusting. The syntax is just not nice to me so yeah. um Do you guys, okay, oh I, give it away?

A

Does this make sense mean mug mean stack, I tried, so yeah the mean stack, so how I got into the mean stack was very it and so gonna explain it. Yeah this. Let's get started off with mango yeah I looked into the mango documentation, it's very huge I didn't like it, so I opted for mangoes and it's so perfect, because documentation is good. The community behind it is good, and it's simple: why use sequel when you can just use Jason Steve to save everything and yeah? It just makes sense. I like it Express.

A

This especial me was one of the best things ever because one it took me two days to just get used to it. After after watching the sky called the net ninja on YouTube and we didn't have documentation, I had a few applications up and running, I never completed them, but yeah Express is so good. I recommend Express for anyone who's getting started into JavaScript, back-end and angular.

A

A

Angular is good if you know it, but if you're starting it out, this is okay. Let me this is how I felt when it's like the first week of angular right, because you know you start out the templates. Each X is nice and everything, but now you get into the deep gif stuff when you're doing like formdata sending stuff to back to the API using observables. It was weird for me because I've never done fronting stuff before so. The whole adjustment was was just hard and the documentation itself is, it doesn't make sense.

A

Sometimes it just gives you some code and be like this is how we declared it. You want to figure it out. Maybe I'm not reading it right, but yeah Angela was a nightmare. I think it took me four months to get proper comfortable with it. There's still some stuff I, don't know. This is also another reason why I'm here so yeah, that's angular and note as I told you guys, I used to hate JavaScript now coming into node, I started off with angular right.

A

So after doing angular I realized, hey I can actually do back-end and front-end with one language. Why don't I do that and I started off with typescript and they now I had to use es6 for the server side, the node side, and it was just nice and yeah if you're doing is any JavaScript just don't go below in 6 cuz you're gonna cry this mean you know this part.

A

This is where everyone gets divided right, because NPM buy NPM I, don't need I, don't mean the package manager I mean every library and all the stuff that comes with NPM comes with ya NPM, so I feel that JavaScript is kind of like a puzzle where you given all the pieces, and you just have to put them together nicely.

A

Sometimes you have to draw it your own pieces, because that's just how it goes, but this just makes development way faster, rather than going and doing on my own table in HTML and java xml and CSS and styling, and I can just go to the angular material page, get the math table put my my data in it done. It looks good if I did it myself, it would look to do look like dialogue. Basically, so oh yeah, another thing with dialog: we can't use anything by the workspace right now.

A

I can use any any text edit I want I can basically go and use them if I want to right. So this is. This was also another reason why I was happy switch to JavaScript and it's over so yeah javascript is actually really amazing. Our light, you know styling, it I had a few passes against it, like keys to JavaScript or whatever, but as I as I got used to it's like okay. No, this is a very good language and with dialog it is a fancy calculator, it's just basically math and stuff. There's nothing else.

A

You can do it it. You can try, but you are gonna fail.

A

That's just how it is so yeah. This talk hasn't been about anything that technical, so I'm sure knowing has any questions. If you do, you can ask them, but.