How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016
I feel like knowing which tools are useful, which ones are currently dominating, and which ones are going to continue being supported in the future is the best place to start learning JavaScript. This is difficult because the ecosystem is so wildly fragmented and insane. You&#x27;ll get a lot of different opinions if you go searching for them, so here are mine.<p>ES2015 is the place to start, it is a finished stable release of the latest version of JavaScript. It represents the single largest update to the language in a long time and includes many features that make development easier. It is being phased into web browsers natively and is the future of the language.<p>For maximum browser support you need a transpiler, this would be a matter of preference because it isn&#x27;t for you, it&#x27;s for the computer. TypeScript however is a very very clean transpiler and it offers optional features which are for you, should you choose to use them.<p>Once you have that setup, you really don&#x27;t need anything else. You don&#x27;t need jQuery unless you&#x27;re trying to support IE8, which is a tiny proportion of the browser market and that will gum up your code significantly.<p>Speaking of gumming up your code, nearly every single library out there is bloat and can or should be avoided. React is very popular but it suits one very specific use case, it should be used almost nowhere else. Particularly since it is still new and evolving, it is going to cause more headaches than it will resolve. Webpack is an enormous bloated nightmare for example, it messes with even static html for little or no perceivable benefit and honestly just avoid all of it if you&#x27;re trying to learn JavaScript.<p>If you want the full-stack experience, Node.js is rapidly becoming the largest JavaScript community on the net. You&#x27;ll have your questions answered quickly and there are modules for everything you want to do. Choose a markup tool for html and css, such as pug and less.<p>There you go. State of the art front end JavaScript with two tools. Full stack with five. If it wasn&#x27;t for the whirlwind massive chaos of the JavaScript community currently, fewer new developers would feel discouraged from becoming involved.