Why: JavaScript is a functional language but its standard libraries miss a lot of the functional goodies we are used to from other languages. Here underscore comes to the rescue.
Why: Concurrency is hard. Callbacks can get out of hand pretty quickly even more so when they are nested. Promises make writing and reading concurrency code simpler.
Why: Your scripts need to be in modules, cleanly separated from each other. If you don’t have an asset pipeline want to load your modules asynchronously or just want to manage your modules from your JavaScript require.js is for you.
Why: Proper dependency management is a tough nut to crack and it is even harder to be pleasantly used (I am looking at you, maven).
Why: Repetitive tasks need to be automated. If you plan to use grunt and bower consider using yeoman which combines both into a workflow.
Why: There are tons of chart or visualization libraries out there but d3 takes a more general approach. It defines a way of thinking, a way of manipulating the document based on data and data alone. It treats the DOM as part of your web application. Your visualization is a part of your document and not just a component you can forget about after creating it. This general approach allows you to create arbitrary visualizations not just charts.
Why: jQuery is almost ubiquitous and this is not by chance. It provides a great foundation and helps in many common scenarios.
Your new post is loading...