Bootcamp
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Bootcamp
Welcome to Bootcamp!
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Logistics
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General Reference
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Projects
0: Language and Tooling
0.0: Module 0 Overview
0.1: New JS Syntax
0.2: ES6
0.2.1: ES6 Basics
0.2.2: ES6 Array Iterators
0.2.3: ES6 Destructuring, Spread Operators
0.2.4: Reference vs. Value
0.3: Reading Documentation
0.4: JS Object as Tally
0.5: Advanced Git
0.6: Nodemon
0.7: Thunder Client
0.8: JS Promises
0.9: VSCode Node Debugger
0.10: Introduction to Classes
0.ICE: In-Class Exercises
1: Frontend Basics
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CSS
2: Backend Basics
3: Backend Applications
4: Backend Structure
5: Full-Stack Applications
6: Frontend Infrastructure
7: React
8: Advanced React
9: Advanced Topics
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Algorithms
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Interview Prep
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User Experience
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0.2: ES6

Introduction

​ES6 is a modern, widely-used version of JavaScript. Every language matures over time as its maintainers release new versions. JS began with few features and has slowly added new ones.
In Coding Basics we mostly used ES5 syntax for simplicity, where ES5 is an older version of JS. In Coding Bootcamp we wish to expose students to the more advanced and modern features of JS seen with ES6. Many companies continue to use ES5 and older syntax depending on when their code was written. ES6 was released in 2015.
In frontend web development (where JS is most commonly seen), it's important to choose a JS version that is compatible across most browsers. This is because we do not control the version of JS that gets executed for our users, which depends on where the code is running, typically a user's browser out of our control. We may not know beforehand if users will access our site from iPhones or smart fridges, and on many devices users are unable to upgrade their browser.
We will not use the latest version of JS, because most devices and browsers would not support it. Instead we'll learn features of ES6, currently the most modern widely-supported version of JS.

Additional Notes

The naming of the JavaScript versions are confusing- see more here if you want to know the details.
The versions of JavaScript are tied to individual features of that version. You can see a matrix of the version and it's support in each popular platform here for ES6 and here for the latest version.
The engineering decision of which version of JavaScript to select for a given project is always a balance between the demographics of your user base and the cost of supporting an older version of the language.
For example, a cutting edge product like GitHub is more likely to have a user demographic that uses the latest version of JavaScript vs a government service website or broad consumer site like Lazada or Amazon.

Further Reading

A Brief History of JavaScript
Auth0 - Blog
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0.2.1: ES6 Basics
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