What you'll learn:
- Objects and functions
- Scopes and closures
- The "this" keyword and call, bind and apply functions
- The module pattern
- Prototype-based object-oriented programming
- Prototypes vs classes
- A deep-dive into the constructor pattern
- Classes
- Concatenative inheritance and prototype-based OOP
- Multiple Inheritance using concatenative inheritance
- Private variables and functions
- Introduction to TypeScript
- Explore a real-world object-oriented JavaScript application
"- the use of classes ... is the source of a number of complications. This paper discusses prototypes as an alternative to classes ... In a prototype-based language, copying rather than instantiation is the mechanism provided to the user for making new objects."
This is a line from a 1986 research paper discussing prototypes as an alternative to classes. Did you know that JavaScript is a prototype-based language and does not need classes? Did you know that JavaScript's Object-Oriented system is actually simpler than classes?
Unfortunately, due to the language being marketed as "Java's little brother", something called the "constructor pattern" was designed as a way to for the language to "look like" class-based Java. The decision to conceal JavaScript's true identity as a prototype-based language in favor of something that looked like half-baked classes has led to widespread confusion among developers that lives to this day.
In this course, we will explore JavaScript's true identity as a prototype-based language and look at different ways of doing OOP in JavaScript. We don't ignore classes or constructors - we will study them deeply and learn how they are abstractions over a prototype-based system and learn how to effectively utilize them.
In this lesson, we will learn how to write effective, maintainable and robust object-oriented code using JavaScript.
