This installment of Programming By Stealth could probably have been two segments but all of us are itching to get moving quickly so we decided to power through. In the first part of the installment, Bart introduces us to JavaScript modules by giving us a bit of a history lesson on how they’ve evolved. If you’re brand new to modules, this will be interesting but not essential. If you have history with them though, you’ll definitely need to pay close attention to understand what’s changed.
Then Bart gets into the details of how modules work. He explains how JavaScript modules export variables, functions, and classes and how there are named exports and default exports and how the syntax differs. What fun would learning about exports be if he didn’t tell us how to import variables, functions and classes into our code for when we use these modules? We also learn about module specifiers to make it all go.
Finally, Bart takes us through three worked examples where he creates some JavaScript modules that exercise everything we just learned.
It’s a long episode but as always, Bart’s excellent show notes at pbs.bartificer.net