2025-09

Learning web development: Authenticating users with plain Node.js

[2025-09-15] dev, javascript, learning web dev

In this chapter, we learn how to write a server that lets users log in via passwords. That process is called authentication.

Learning web development: Implementing web servers

[2025-09-12] dev, javascript, learning web dev

In this chapter, we’ll write our own web server: It will serve files and manage the data for a browser app.

Learning web development: Frontend frameworks

[2025-09-09] dev, javascript, learning web dev

In this chapter, we’ll take a look at frontend frameworks – libraries that help with programming web user interfaces (“frontend” means “browser”, “backend” means “server”). We’ll use the frontend framework Preact to implement the frontend part of a todo list app – whose backend part we’ll implement in a future chapter.

Learning web development: Installing npm packages and bundling

[2025-09-07] dev, javascript, learning web dev

In this chapter we develop a small web app in the same way that large professional web apps are developed:

  • We use libraries that we install via npm.
  • We write tests for some of the functionality.
  • We combine all JavaScript code into a single file before we serve the web app. That is called bundling. (Why we do that it explained later.)

Learning web development: Asynchronous JavaScript – Promises and async functions

[2025-09-02] dev, javascript, learning web dev

In this chapter, we learn how to handle tasks that take a long time to complete – think downloading a file. The mechanisms for doing that, Promises and async functions are an important foundation of JavaScript and enable us to do a variety of interesting things.

2025-08

Learning web development: JSON and processing files in Node.js

[2025-08-31] dev, javascript, learning web dev

In this chapter, we explore the popular data format JSON. And we implement shell commands via Node.js that read and write files.

Learning web development: JavaScript Maps

[2025-08-30] dev, javascript, learning web dev

In this chapter, we’ll explore the data structure Map (a class) which lets us translate (“map”) from an input value to an output value. We’ll use a Map to display text upside-down in a terminal!

Learning web development: JavaScript exceptions

[2025-08-29] dev, javascript, learning web dev

In this chapter, we look at exceptions in JavaScript. They are a way of handling errors. We’ll need them for the next chapter.

JavaScript’s trademark problem

[2025-08-29] dev, javascript

In this blog post, we discuss Oracle’s trademark of the word “JavaScript”:

  • What are the problems caused by that trademark?
  • How can we fix those problems?

Learning web development: Plain objects in JavaScript

[2025-08-28] dev, javascript, learning web dev

In this chapter, we learn how to create plain objects with properties. We use them to create a simple flash card app.