TODO
title: (Parts of) my element author: David Bruant layout: post permalink: /?p=154 categories:
- Uncategorized
Context
Last Tuesday and Wednesday, I was giving a JavaScript training/workshop at a company. I’ll probably blog more on the content of this event later, but I’d like to say a few words about what this events represents to me.
I know Kung-Fu JavaScript (and learned it by myself)
My very first JavaScript was a copy/paste used to display the last modified date at the bottom of a page. It was crappy, clumpsy, using document.write but was doing the job (not on Internet Explorer 6-8, though).
Afterward, I worked several days so that the background color of a website adapts to the time of the day. Bright background during the day, dark during the night, pink fading at sun rise, orange at sunset.
Then a small script to display/hide a description of some item on a click.
I’ve had a small class at ENSEIRB-MATMECA on “Web and XML technologies”, but I haven’t really learned anything more on HTML/JS/CSS
I’ve been involved with other students in a web project that was a collaboration between my school and a company. But no one ever reviewed our code.
I’ve read things on blogs. John Resig, Nicholas Zakas, Mozilla Hacks, Kangax, Paul Irish, to name a few.
I’ve watched talks given by Douglas Crockford (in real too during my year at UCSD!!), John Resig and so many others.
I’ve listened to each and every episode of “a minute with Brendan”.
I’ve registered and participated to the WHATWG mailing-list. And more recently on the ECMAScript mailing-list (es-discuss)
I’ve contributed to MDN on JavaScript articles.
I’ve created some very modest projects on Github. I’ve worked with airportyh on Github to add array extras to older browsers with good standard support.
I’ve read a bunch of JavaScript by view-sourcing, by reading open source projects code such as jQuery.
I’ve reviewed test cases on test262.
And this is how I learned JavaScript. I don’t have a degree, nor have I had a professor on web technologies to bring me to the level I have reached. This skill is mine. No institution has educated me on the matter. The people/groups I have mentionned above were my (informal) JavaScript teachers.
Yet, without a degree, without any proof of my skill (not even with a badge 
), I’ve had a contract to do company training. Someone has been able to see the passion, to see the skill, to see the intrisec value in what I could share regardless of the fact that I have no formal proof of my skill.
At the end of the training
At that workshop were people from the Java world who were doubtful on JavaScript to be a language with which you could do clean object-oriented applications. Some were relectant to JavaScript yet curious of the workshop. The same said at the end they they felt way more confident in their ability to write big clean applications.
At the end of the training/workshop, someone said “JavaScript was an incompetence I had” and this is probably the best JavaScript/education-related compliment I’ve ever received.
Overall, I’ve been able to share language fundamentals, good practices, some patterns, I’ve been able to share my passions
The “element”
Ken Robinson wrote a book and gave several talks on what he calls the “element”. It would be this thing anyone have a natural ability for. Different from person to person, of course. Yet, he’s convinced anyone has one and my only disagreement is that one can have several such “elements” and I’d consider JavaScript to be one of mine. And I think that this is the source of how I got this training. I was never formally hired. I was just trusted based on what someone saw of my passion for this technology, that it was part of my element.
Conclusion
I wish you, dear reader, to find your element(s) and to find one way or another to live in/with it, hopefully making a living out of it if it’s possible. You may not even need a degree as I hope I proved in this article.
Anyway, these last two days, I was in my element and it felt fucking good! I do wish you to have the occasion to feel the same.