Attention! WordPress Developers Need to Learn JavaScript Deeply

As message from Matt, CEO of WordPress:

In 2015 Matt Mullenweg, the creator of WordPress, spoke about JavaScript in his yearly keynote “The State of Word”. In it, he gave the WordPress community homework — to Learn JavaScript, Deeply. To go out and make 2016 the year that you finally take those steps into getting comfortable with JavaScript.

“Take Every Opportunity to really beef up your JavaScript Chops” — Mall Mullenweg, Founder of WordPress

This is still true in 2018! Vue, Angular and React (JavaScript frameworks) are taking over. More and more SPA are being built with these technologies and are in some cases being creatively integrated into WordPress.

 

WordPress JavaScript Bandwagon

The new WordPress.com codebase, codenamed “Calypso,” moves WordPress.com away from MySQL and PHP.

Calypso is built entirely in JavaScript, and communicates with WordPress.com only using our REST API. This means the new WordPress.com is a browser-based client for our API, just like any other application built on top of it — lighter, faster, and more flexible for a mobile-focused world.
Calypso

 

Why Should You Learn JavaScript Deeply?

You should learn JavaScript deeply because JavaScript is the language used by frameworks like Vue, Angular and React. These frameworks are used to build SPAs (Single page apps)! Also the Founder of WordPress Matt Mullenweg said too.

Single page apps are powerful, single page apps do not refresh the page. Only the parts of the page that need to change will change. Best example of a single page app is Google, when you search for something in Google only the results refresh and not the whole page.

A single page app basically mimics the behavior of what a desktop or mobile app does. Any program you’ve used, such as a text editor, is an application that doesn’t have to refresh. Even USA Today uses a SPA, click on articles does not refresh the page. You can build a SPA for any website you can imagine.

Angular Basics

 

Why Learn To Build Single Page Applications?

They are very fast and efficient. Pages load faster because there’s less content and data to load. Leading to less processing time and fast response time. As a result, single page apps scale better.

Full stack developers are in high demand. Not many WordPress developers are prepared for client side programming. This means being a single page application developer can put you in a position for a higher salary/hourly rate.

 

The Only Downside Is…

Currently the web is still in the transition phase for widespread adoption of single page apps. SPAs won’t be a common thing for at least four years. There are a lot of conflicting opinions on how to approach SPAs, such as all the different tools and frameworks to choose from. Which can be overwhelming for beginners. WordPress isn’t fully prepared for SPAs yet. Only the REST API and backbone.js client are available. You’re left to figure out the rest for yourself. Search Engines struggle to index and crawl SPAs.

 

Learn JavaScript Deeply With Me

How do we learn JavaScript Deeply? The best way to learn is to build things! You don’t have to do this alone either. This 2018 I am going to building more Angular apps and I will be demonstrating how to integrate these SPA’s (Single Page Applications) into WordPress.

Read more MyDigitalSauce WordPress blog posts.

Read more MyDigitalSauce JavaScript blog posts.