Perhaps unfashionable (opinion) but I stand by it:



Every single JS developer should strive, by the time they have 6-12+ months experience, to have some basic working knowledge (have read some, and can reasonably understand some parts) of the most recent JS (ES20XX) spec.

You can certainly have a successful career without this level of knowledge, and that's fine if that's your choice.



But my challenge and my claim is, you will never really know JS or have solid mastery over it, without at least obtaining that kind of familiarity with the spec.

And in concurrence with diving into the spec, might I suggest some guidebooks along that journey, such as my @YDKJS books, to help you make sense of and navigate and understand what you're reading.



I've learned, and taught many others, to "think like the spec".

Not just "a good idea", but often quite useful.



One of getify's laws:



If you don't understand why a piece of code works, you have no hope of understanding why it breaks or how to fix it, other than by sheer guessing and luck.



Best way to learn why code works? Spec + books.

I'm so often asked how I got such mastery of understanding JS.



No magical mystery here. No natural born aptitude.



Just sheer determination to ask questions, and get those answers from the spec (and trying code) rather than what Stack Overflow or tweets claim is true.

And all my books are is documentation of my journey to get closer to knowing JS, so that you can follow in my footsteps, but hopefully with an easier journey.

I remember a decade ago trying to read messages on JS discussions like es-discuss, and feeling so completely stupid because they talked in "spec speak" with all manner of acronyms and formal language jargon. I used to feel so humiliated at how ignorant I was.

But I really wanted to understand JS and I wanted to be able to articulate my thoughts on it, and suggestions for it, in useful ways.



So I just asked question after question, and the only place I found reliably that could answer those questions was the spec.

And when each answer led to more questions, I just kept diving further. Really there's no magic secret other than that I just asked more questions than most anyone else, and I didn't stop until I found answers.

You can follow @getify.

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