Question

I am new to apple and would like to learn to program web sites in mac. I am interested in learning Backbone/Knockout js. Is there any write up available that I can use to kick start my learning experience? All my development on the two technologies were using Windows ASP.Net under IIS. What are the things I need to setup a simple development environment to learn and test above mentioned technologies in Mac?

Answer 1

(Your question is pretty broad, and I’m assuming that you know relatively little about JavaScript and are just looking to start writing JavaScript applications on your Mac. Note that this is not going to be much different from writing them on a Windows machine, but I have little experience with developing web applications on Windows machines. Hopefully my answer is within the scope of your question.)

For JavaScript development, all you need is a text editor and some sort of JavaScript engine. As far as text editors go, TextMate is the most popular Mac app of that sort (although it requires a license). You could also use the built-in TextEdit app (although it’s horrible IMO), a command-line text editor (such as Vi or Vim), or a different editor such as Sublime Text. But in a nutshell: JavaScript does not require any specific IDE or anything like that. Use whatever you like.

As far as a JavaScript engine goes, since you’re looking to do web design, you really just need a web browser. The major browsers for Mac (Chrome, Safari, and Firefox) all have advanced web design tools (the built-in inspectors in Chrome and Safari, and the Firebug add-on for Firefox) that will allow you to see the JavaScript console, network requests, etc. You can even fire those up and write JavaScript statements directly into them. You should explore those sooner rather than later, as they’ll prove immensely valuable.