Daily Javascript

Mantra (GitHub: kadirahq/mantra, License: MIT)

Mantra is an application architecture for Meteor. If you are not familair with Meteor I would strongly advice you take a look at it. The developers of Mantra try to achieve two main goals: High Maintainability and Future Proof.

Maintainability is a key factor for success when working within large teams. Mantra achieves this by unit testing every part of the app, while following standards for everything. This makes it easy to add new users and work with teams.

There is a very extensive spec of how a Mantra application would work which can be found here. I really like this approach, ‘cause it combines the best parts of all the new and shiny stuff out there.

Today is the last day you can submit your solution for the weekly challenge. Next weeks challenge will be up tomorrow so make sure you check back then to see what I have in store for you next.

Workshopper (GitHub: workshopper/workshopper, License: MIT, npm: workshopper)

Workshopper is a terminal workshop runner framework. It gives you the tools to create workshops and exercises which can be run from any terminal. Which is a great thing if you are teaching people how are still scared of the terminal. This way they will practice their programming skills and develop a sense of comfort on the command line.

Workshopper is being used by code schools like “Learn You Node“ and Nodeschool.io. I came across a Hapi.js exercise as well, which made me think why not have an interactive introduction to your framework.

The framework is essentially a test-runner with a very fancy terminal UI. The workshopper package is largely concerned with the menu system and some basic command-line parsing but much of the work for executing the exercise validation is handled by workshopper-exercise.

I really like this project because it’s a nice and quick way to really get into how something works. For instance this workshop on functional Javascript.

If you did not submit you solution to this weeks challenge, creating Tic Tac Toe, I’d advice you to get a move on it because there is only day remaining. If you need to refresh you memory on the challenge head over to the challenge page.

Nodal (GitHub: keithwhor/nodal, License: MIT, npm: nodal)

Nodal is a web server and API framework for Node.js. It is built upon an ideology of a robust, scalable microservice architecture. It borrows a lot from Rails and Django so working with the framework made me feel right at home since I used to do a lot of Rails. With familiar commands such as: nodal db:migrate, nodal g:controller et cetra.

One of the features that really blew me away was how a scaffold CRUD handles query parameters. It uses the .where(this.params.query) where the query params will be applied as a filter. Which uses a very similar syntax as the filter methods in Django’s ORM.

The framework is configured to use Postgresql as a database, which is a great idea in my opinion. Especially since the framework tries to aim at developer who want a little more guidance in their development process to get familiar with Node.js and the Javascript eco system in general.

The developer posted a screencast of him setting up a very simple twitter clone which I recommend you watch.

And there will be more screencast’s in the future. This will definitely be part of the next API I’m gonna build.

Don’t forget to challenge your self this week. There is still a challenge running which is Make Tic Tac Toe in Javascript but make sure you submit it before Friday is you want it to be shown in the weekly results.

First of all here is a link to last weeks results sadly the challenge was a bit to hard, so I heard in some direct feedback. So I will switch it up this week. No more fractals this time. This weeks challenge is create a Tic Tac Toe game using Javascript.

You can go two ways for this implementation.

The first one would be very naive. Simply switch between 2 users, the first user would be X the other would be O. The program should be able to detect when one of the players has won or if it is a tie.

If you are feeling very confident implement AI for player O. Same rules would apply. Be mindful in your implementation because next week there will come some additional requirements.

Again I’ve created a Codepen for you to start with. Please submit your solution to this Google Form and happy coding.

ChakraCore (GitHub: Microsoft/ChakraCore, License: MIT)

In case you did not see or hear it yet, Microsoft has open sourced the ChakraCore. ChakraCore is the Javascript engine that powers Microsoft Edge.

The ChakraCore repository provides a fully supported and open-source standalone JavaScript engine, with the same as the Microsoft Edge’s Chakra engine, to embed within your projects.

For more in depth information I would refer you to the official post by Microsoft. When you don’t feel like reading that, just watch this announcement video.

Besides the great news coming from Microsoft, jQuery has a special day to celebrate. The ten year existence of the most used library on the web. The first release was at 14th of January 2006. Since then it has changed a lot and helped evolve the web to the great platform it is nowadays.

Go over to the jQuery blog to read a little bit about the journey to today.

Don’t forget to submit your implementation of this weeks challenge. If you need a refresher on what the assignment was head over the challenge page