DEV Community

Cover image for 1 Line of Spec a Day
Xaver Fleer
Xaver Fleer

Posted on

1 Line of Spec a Day

...keeps JavaScript guesswork away.

Why?

JavaScript is a wonderful language. Also a horrible one. Telling enough: Douglas Crockford's seminal book JavaScript the good parts contains many pages on The Bad Parts and The Aweful Parts.

Life is too short for guesswork what JavaScript does and for hoping it to do the right thing. On my quest to mastery I start a new challenge: Reading (at least) 1 line of Spec a Day.

How long will it take?

The spec has about 30 000 characters. Divide this by 60 characters per line leads to 500 days. This is 1 year 4 months and 15 days. Of course, I can read more than just one sentence a day to speed the process up. But the goal is just 1 line per day.

Why just one line?

Big tasks are hard to master. Perseverance is key. If I want to finish reading the spec I need to make reading a habit. This can only either achieved by strong willpower (which is difficult for me as father of a newborn) or by starting it gradually with a minimally exhausting task per day (it is hard for me to argue that 1 line of code is too much to read at any given day)

What are my main learnings?

It's actually possible to read the whole spec in a reasonable amount of time.

--

#1LineOfSpec #1/N

Top comments (0)