Background: 2020.10.24 Programmer festival, gold digging X Turing, each big guy sharing front-end JS past, present, future
On that day, prepare melon seed drinks and listen to the big shots about JS development, just like listening to a group of old people talk about history, which is very interesting. Also coinciding with the release of the fourth edition of “The Little Red Book”, we invited Liu Jiang, co-founder of Turing, to be our guest and tell us his story with JS. For the integrity of the story, or to liu Jiang’s first-person narration to restore:
In the early
Haha, you may not know, rhino book and little Red book are my first out (introduction), then or nine years of time, I still in the electric publishing house. So I have a lot of affection for these two books. Back in the year 2000 or so, I didn’t know much about technology, so I used to look on Amazon and buy whatever sold well. There was a book that was at the top of the charts for a long time, and I asked a lot of people and they said they didn’t know, they hadn’t heard of it, Design Patterns, and you were in software engineering in the ’90s and you asked a teacher what Patterns was and nobody knew. It has been more than 20 years since Lu Jian led his students to translate it, so you can see The Times are developing very fast. When the rhinoceros book came out, it was not the best time, the sales were very mediocre, I was very afraid. When JS first came out in 1995, there was a wave of heat, still very popular, of course, this is only abroad. Java is also hot. A lot of people say that Java has nothing to do with JavaScript, and it’s not. It’s catching on. JavaScript was a new language, Java was hot, netscape and Sun were supposed to negotiate for JavaScript, what do I get, what do I get for you, things like that. At that time, the Web was in the early days of some foreign Internet companies. They wanted to write Web pages and use JS to do some small things. It was still quite popular. Some books were selling well in ’97, but they weren’t selling well in’ 00, even rhino books.
entrepreneurship
I started my business in 2005 and started to write some classic books like C++, Primer, etc. In 2007, there was a word on the Internet that was very popular — AJAX, moon shadow: “I thought it was a football team.” In fact, AJAX is also popular. There is also a very popular advertisement in foreign countries called AJAX, like selling laundry detergent or something. See a lot of people are talking about, and like foreign publishing houses have such topic selection techniques, I think what is this? I’m also surprised that computer books have been out for so many years that people don’t know about this stuff. I asked a lot of people, but I didn’t know what it was. So I’m struggling to figure out what it means. But I spent a lot of time looking around, and I saw Manning put out an animation about it, probably in preparation for a new book. After reading the feeling, this is not very similar to Flash, the dynamic effect is particularly good. Considering Flash was hot back then, this one seems to have a chance. So I discussed it with my colleagues, and when I saw some good publishers, I bought all the AJAX books (copyright), such as “AJAX In Action”, “AJAX Basics tutorial”, and, by the way, “Professional AJAX”.
The market research
By the Spring Festival of the following year, the books were selling well, and this was an important milestone in Turing’s development. I was also very concerned about the content of the book, and found that it was JavaScript and HTML, and XHR, and all that stuff, so this is popular, JavaScript is also going to be popular. However, I had also been injured in a rhinoceros book before, and I was very scared, so I specially went to do market research. I went to Wangfujing and saw shelves full of JavaScript books in the bookstore. I looked at them and thought, wow, there is no way to sell this book. There is so much competition. But I pulled the book out and I looked at the copyright page and I realized that these were books from a few years ago, and when we did this in ’05,’ 06, JavaScript books had not been published for a long time because the market was so bad. What does that mean? In fact, the publishing industry is very aware of technology trends. Of course, there are always some very boring programming language rankings ah, in fact, it is nonsense, can not see any technical trends, but only buy the book to see, because it is very real. Back in 2005, there was no front end, everyone was using JavaScript, but the position was still graphic designer/engineer. If you look ahead, it has a development curve. According to this curve, you can have a better judgment on the future development. For example, Yahoo, the earliest Front end and the earliest big company, was the benchmark of the Front end, including YUI at that time.
With luck
Anyway, seeing the books on the shelf, I picked up all the good ones, including my rhino book, which was still on the shelf, gathering dust. So I saw a huge opportunity and felt like there was definitely going to be a JavaScript book. Later, I searched on the Internet, which domestic JavaScript books have not been introduced, rhinoceros books have also been cold, there are not many good books to tell the truth, foreign also cold for a year, and then found this book. “Said the hand in the” little Red book”
There’s actually one edition of this book, three editions in total, and those of you who read a lot probably know, what are the best publishers in the United States? Pearson is great, isn’t it? O ‘Reilly is also quite strong, especially the cover of his animal book. I am quite proud of this cover in my career at that time. I introduced it into China at the earliest, and so did this brand. Including Manning, the quality and feelings of these companies are good. Rax is different, although the book is very many, but…… Of course, people in China also know that Turing is a reliable publisher, there are many publishers in the market but he has no feelings, right? Rax published so many books, and some of them were good, but the problem was that Rax signed an exclusive agreement with Tsinghua University, which meant that he would choose books first, and you could only choose those he didn’t want, so Tsinghua university also published a lot of books at that time. But just did not think of is, this book just do not want that some inside, we signed when his copyright is still in, hey hey 😁. And the first edition of 05 years out, about a year out of no one, we do not know is that this book is Rax introduced one of the best books to sell in China (maybe not one of, hey hey 😁) you think, those peers should be more depressed, signed the exclusive to leave the best seller for us. Another book he didn’t pick was Linux Kernel Architecture. Ha ha ha 😂
Therefore, I would like to say that it is very important for everyone to have a correct understanding of one thing when doing technology, no matter what kind of work. Like many people, we should not use diligence in action, as if I am busy and do a lot of things to avoid laziness in thinking. But to study, to think more about this thing is what the law and what the trend. It’s important to spend more time on quality thinking. Now, many of you are working for companies, whether it’s hard to recruit clients, android /iOS, learning these technologies is an investment, you have to invest a lot of time, time is your life, you are investing your life. In fact, we choose books in investment, you in the investment before this kind of analysis, judgment, thinking is very important. Books like this one and the Rhinoceros book are very famous, actually the rhinoceros book is more famous abroad, but at home, it still has the highest status. Why, not only because of JS, but also because of the front end of this industry, the Internet is also some new opportunities in 05 years, there are a few pioneers like the United States of the Group of students Wang X, 03 years in the United States, ahead of time to feel the wave of the Internet. The first wave of Internet before 2000, the biggest Internet companies now, Tencent And Alibaba in China, Amazon and Google in the United States, were all before 2000. I could have caught that wave, but I missed it, haha. We have no chance, like Wang X is more sensitive in the United States, he said that he felt the internal wave in 2003, so why is JavaScript selling very hot at that node. China is a bit behind the US, but it’s catching on. OK, that’s it. That’s it.
conclusion
Moon shadow summary: I think liu Jiang’s sharing has two points, that is to do things the first to have feelings, the second point to think more. No matter do front-end, community, translation or publishing books, because we love, so hard to invest, rather than say that party A is very busy, urging to do this…… After the advertising + book sales skip.
Afterword.
Forgive me for doing back to the title party, this article is and friends to exchange some ideas, think of liu Jiang teacher’s story, write down, easy to read. If you’re interested, you can watch it back.