If you are studying syntax alone without actually taking the time to understand what the language actually does, I think that it will be much harder for you to understand. I think the people that developed the language are trying to make it as easy as possible for someone to grasp it, I don't think they are trying to make it a challenge for you.

 

I would say that every html tag is quite descriptive of what it does, not all the time is it intuitive and you have to learn what the tag does, but most of the time there's a reason why they decided to call it that, when people think of css, they don't remember that it's designed to cascade, which means "a process whereby something, typically information or knowledge, is successively passed on.", so you make use of the cascade to keep the style as simple as possible and don't have to style everything specifically, I used to wonder why they would choose these names, but then realize that there's actually a good reason for it...

 

Now if your learning syntax, wouldn't it be a much better idea to get a good grasp of what the language actually does before you start learning, I've known what it all does except node.js and some other things, if you go into it just learning syntax it just doesn't make sense, but if you can kind of picture what it's doing from understanding what it does deeply, then you will grasp it quicker. HTML and CSS is very self explanatory, but with node, because it's not visible of what it does, we don't understand it, all we can really understand from the name is that it has something to do with networks at first.

 

I think maybe the education system makes people think like this, they just want people to regurgitate information, like memorizing facts, but don't actually take a step back to think about it.

 

Closures for example, many people just don't understand what it is, I even had trouble to get my head around it, what I understand is that it's basically a function in a function, and I imagined they called it that because one function is enclosed in the other, it gives it a private scope. The developers want to bring the language down to be as simple as possible so everyone can get it, not purposely making it hard because they like a challenge.

 

Maybe this was obvious but from what I see it looks like many people are just fed with facts and data, but rarely does anyone take a step back to think about what it does. Not all the time the language developers make it intuitive, but if I was learning it all again, I imagine you could get an understanding quicker from learning how it works exactly and why they would call it what they do. And it would probably help to understand why it's useful. Something like angular also, the name would seem like they pulled it out of a hat, but it probably describes the framework, I imagine because you can load things instantly, it's sharp, angles are sharp. But with some other names, they probably just pulled it out of a hat, like ember.js, it does not describe the framework at all. Most of the time you will find that the developers tried to make the language as simple and easy to pick up as possible...

@@NullDrone what exactly do you mean by "understanding what the languages does"? Hopefully it does what you, the programmer, tell it to do.

I'm guessing you are talking about what the build in functions and statements of the language does, how well these are named and how abstract they are.

Correct me if I am wrong but your post is a bit unclear (I'm trying hard to express this a little more politely than the others )

 

If I am correct in assuming that you talk about build in functionality you must remember that the more a function/statement/command can do the more abstract the name would have to be. Frameworks can have more acurate and specialized names.

Here is a simple example.

It makes perfect sense if a PHP framework has a function say for loading a sidebar. This function could be named something very specific like load-sidebar(). However, it would make no sense if the function was build into the PHP language itself. It is simply too specialized. In the language itself you would probably prefer more abstract functionality that would load any sort of content. So you could be looking through the PHP manual for hours, without luck, if you are looking specifically for a load-sidebar() function.

Edited April 3, 201610 yr by Nillervision