JavaScript Programming: Pushing the Limits

Chapter 1

Best Practices

A firm foundation is vitally important for any application. Before you write a single line of code, you need to spec out the app's architecture. What features will your app have, and how will these be implemented? More importantly, how will these features work with one another; in other words, what is the app's ecosystem?

Answering these questions involves a combination of research, prototyping, and a firm grounding in best practices. While I can't help you research or prototype the specific components of your app, I can pass on the wisdom I've gained on best practices.

This chapter covers the fundamental engineering concept of loose coupling, then explains one method of achieving it: JavaScript MVCs and templating engines. Next you discover a variety of development tools, such as Weinre, version control and CSS preprocessing. Finally, you learn how to set up a project in Grunt to automate tasks such as concatenation and minification. Using Grunt, you establish a test driven development pattern that runs your app through a suite of tests whenever a file is modified.

Loose Coupling

If you take only one thing from this book, I hope that it's to avoid tight coupling in your app. Tight coupling is an old engineering term that refers to separate components being too interdependent. For instance, say that you buy a TV with a built-in BluRay player. But what happens if the TV breaks? The BluRay player may still work perfectly, but is rendered useless by the ...