Improve Your JavaScript Knowledge By Reading Source Code

About The Author

Carl Mungazi is a frontend developer at Limejump, an energy startup based in London. He spends his time digging deep into the depths of all things JavaScript … More about Carl ↬

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When you are still early on in your programming career, digging into the source code of open source libraries and frameworks can be a daunting endeavor. Reading source code is difficult at first but it becomes easier with time. The goal is not to understand everything but to come away with a different perspective and new knowledge.In this article, Carl Mungazi shares how he got over his fear and began using source code to improve his knowledge and skills. He also uses Redux to demonstrate how he approaches breaking down a library.

Do you remember the first time you dug deep into the source code of a library or framework you use frequently? For me, that moment came during my first job as a frontend developer three years ago.

We had just finished rewriting an internal legacy framework we used to create e-learning courses. At the beginning of the rewrite, we had spent time investigating a number of different solutions including Mithril, Inferno, Angular, React, Aurelia, Vue, and Polymer. As I was very much a beginner (I had just switched from journalism to web development), I remember feeling intimidated by the complexity of each framework and not understanding how each one worked.

My understanding grew when I began investigating our chosen framework, Mithril, in greater depth. Since then, my knowledge of JavaScript — and programming in general — has been greatly helped by the hours I have spent digging deep into the guts of the libraries I use daily either at work or in my own projects. In this post, I will share some of the ways you can take your favorite library or framework and use it as an educational tool.