I think you misunderstood me. It’s not the abstraction that’s important. It’s the problem solving that comes with knowing how the understanding.
How can you really be tasked with solving problems if your first response is to look for a node package that does it for you? And that’s what JavaScript teaches you.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t use node packages. But learning to do that as your first steps into programming is robbing you of learning how to use code to solve problems.
C/assembly are great starters because they teach you how computers actually work.
Even a simple function in JS taking one variable abstracts a good deal of that away from you because it handles things like memory allocation for you.
A lot of modern hopeful programmers that make it into our interviews can barely explain what the new keyword of a OOP language actually does, and way too many have no idea what a stack is.
This isn’t useful when you write CRUD web-applications for a few thousands users, which is arguably a lot of modern programming is, but it’s extremely useful if you ever want to build something original.
Which is actually the key issue. You seem to think building a water pump isn’t a beginner project, but why isn’t it? It’s one of the most basic programs you could write. In fact it’s so basic that you could solve it mechanically, without the use of programming, if you have running water to power the timed open close mechanism of the pump and pull the water.
By contrast, a web site is infinitely more complex. Only you think it isn’t, because other programmers have build most of your tools for you. Which is great, you should stand on the shoulder if giants every time you can. What isn’t going to be great is when you’re tasked with solving a problem no one has solved for you first.
Do they have internet? Because if they do, then cloud9 IDE is an excellent way to teach, any language too.
One of the best examples of this is CS50x from Harvard, which uses it (and other cloud services) to give students an IDE, automatic helpers, debuggers and code checkers.
Node is easy to set up and get going with, but if you’re teaching people how to hack, maybe it’s better to teach them something much more low level so they can actually build real things? I mean, if you want to build a solar powered aquafarm, or water pump, then C or Python and a raspberry gets you a lot further than JavaScript, and with C you actually learn how computers work.
But I guess it depends on the circumstances, and not knowing yours, then perhaps JS is a good choice.
How is JavaScript accessible? Because of websites like the linked article, which covers the basics, that lets you build things? Because Udemy, codeacademy and all the others will teach you how to google program using it?
Maybe you’re right, but this page doesn’t actually teach you databases, and most of those courses don’t actually teach you programming.
At least not efficiently.
I have worked with JS for a long time, and I don’t hate it, but it’s such a terrible language and environment that the most popular part of it is literally a strict syntactical superset of of it.
I don’t particularly like Typescript by the way, and I don’t think it’s really that useful, but you can’t deny that most people do.
I think 95% of all projects would be better of using something that wasn’t JavaScript for the whole stack, and I think that’s the reason so few things are build on node. I like graphql as much as you do, I also think Prisma is okish, but I’d rather use Django, Flask, Java Spring it .Net Core because they are so much more efficient in the long term.
Of course on the client side, all the innovations and all the talent lies with JS, and there is some advantages for using JS for your whole stack. Those advantages end at the DB though, at least in my opinion.
This isn’t a problem, you can use Prisma for Postgres, and there are decent drivers for mssql, but I’d never advise people to use nosql unless they had a very specific reason for doing so, and I can’t think of one.
How can you really be tasked with solving problems if your first response is to look for a node package that does it for you? And that’s what JavaScript teaches you.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t use node packages. But learning to do that as your first steps into programming is robbing you of learning how to use code to solve problems.