Chapter 1: An Overview of Modern JavaScript
In this chapter, we will talk about some core JavaScript concepts. If you are new to JavaScript and need an introduction, check out Chapter 13, Appendix: Essential JavaScript Concepts.
Understanding some of the modern concepts of JavaScript is not a prerequisite to using Danfo.js, but we recommend going through this chapter if you're new to JavaScript or coming from a Python background, the reason being that we'll be using most of the concepts introduced here when building applications with Danfo.js. Also, it is worth mentioning that many of the concepts introduced here will, in general, help you to write better JavaScript.
This chapter introduces you to some modern JavaScript concepts, and by the end, you will have learned and understand the following concepts:
- Understanding the difference between let and var
- Destructuring
- Spread syntax
- Overview of scopes and closures
- Understanding Array and Object methods
- Understanding the this property
- Arrow functions
- Promises and async/await
- Object-oriented programming and JavaScript classes
- Setting up a modern JavaScript environment with transpilers
- Unit testing with Mocha and Chai
