Ask HN: Help, I'm Drowning in JavaScript
Yesterday I spent 4 hours regexing out HTML data from not so well maintained data sources and screamed at my computer, because I was not able to find patterns. I know, please don't ask. This is not high level programming. We're talking .replace and .match, with the occaisonal if/else over hundreds of sets. My colleague calmed me down and took the time to help me. Bless him. This colleague has multiple projects within the company, because, to me, he is a modern web dev: Building scrapers from scratch with Node, uses multiple frameworks, you get the jist.
My path in this company should have been: Learning the code he writes, so I can help him maintaining the software and be on standby, if something breaks. This won't be happening in the forseeable future.
My problem: I do not understand his code. Or anyone elses. While I basically use if/else, he uses ternary operators. I write functions by hand, the uses arrow functions and symbols I can hardly understand. Multiple generations of Javascript foundation changes and yearly new crazes are lying between us. We do not have the time to code review his projects. Also, he should not be my teacher. But: I want to be able to help him and not be a burden.
I tried $learnToCode websites, YouTube tutorials, bought "Master Classes" from the usual suspects. But I'm literally drowning in the market of javascript. There is no clean line learning "This is the 2000s" to "Welcome to the year 2022" javascript.
For example, I do not get Typescript; I do not understand, how big projects can use Node, with it's thousands of dependencies, while nobody cares, that 20 to 100 of them are deprecated, or in short: I do not understand, how this whole eco system works. But I want to. Do you have any suggestions on how to unclutter this mess, which absolutely overwhelms me?