I never really thought it would happen. I never thought I would be the guy that was having trouble learning new things. Learning new ways of progressing my craft.
But this has happened. I’m a beginner again and it’s proving to be difficult.
I’ve been using Ember on a project and on most days I’m drowning. Ember does a lot of stuff I don’t understand. Figuring out what that stuff is, is the hard part.
Ember really isn’t a DOM framework. JavaScript works differently inside of Ember. I have to change the way I think of JavaScript. It’s no longer elements and traversing through them. It’s now all objects and properties.
Objects and properties aren’t difficult to understand. That’s just basic programming stuff. It’s how they get wired up that doesn’t make sense most of the time.
I think this would be much easier for a beginner. If someone doesn’t have any prior knowledge of DHTML and jQuery, there are fewer hurdles to get over.
I’m starting to come around to Ember. It certainly hasn’t been easy. I have to swallow a lot of pride. I have to ask a lot of questions that seem simple. These are questions that I haven’t asked in years. Things like how to submit form data. Stop laughing. Or how to link pages together.
If you have been programming for a while and are thinking about trying out Ember. Forget what you currently know about JavaScript, forget the DOM, think in objects and properties, and know that there is a lot of magic.
Timebox the feature you are working on. If you can’t get to a working solution in that time, swallow your pride, and ask for help.