Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment--20150814190019/@comment-5973717-20150816071231

Imamadmad wrote: The thing that worries me most isn't the restrictions on advanced JS users, who could probably write most of their code in one hit before sending it off for review, but on the way the review will pose an additional barrier to those who are just starting to learn and use JS. When learning how to code in any language, it is common to write your scripts in small parts, testing those, finding where they break, fix the problems, find out they break again, fix even more, and only then writing the next part of the function. When you're starting out, there will generally be a lot of trial and error involved, and the user will learn from the failures as much as the successes. Sending the code through a review process not only slows down this process of trial and error, but also may prevent a user from learning how to make the function properly by having any and all mistakes pointed out by the reviewer rather than letting them find them for themselves. If a person can find their own mistakes, they are more likely to remember them and as a result less likely to do them again than if somebody else just points them out. If the person wanted somebody else to make the function, they would have asked, but instead chose to do it themselves in order to learn. If you take that learning experience away from users, or even just present more barriers to the learning process, you will find far fewer people will be willing to start learning how to code in JS, which will in turn eventually lead to less people knowing how to edit JS as the current coders slowly drift away over time and there are fewer new ones to take their places.

This is how most of us learned Javascript, both in general and for Mediawiki.