Ben Alman cowboy

Self-Assessment for Bocoup's "Foundations of Programming with JavaScript" training

This gist is aimed at helping you assess whether you'll be a good fit for Bocoup's "Foundations of Programming with JavaScript" training. This class is aimed at introducing you to fundamental concepts of development using JavaScript. In this class, you'll work through the process of building a simple game of hangman; along the way, you'll learn about functions, arrays, objects, and prototypes, and get a brief introduction to the jQuery library. You'll also learn about approaches that will help you write more maintainable code, and get introduced to tools for debugging and testing your JavaScript.

Getting grunt to work with Cygwin and git on Windows is a bit difficult considering the cygwin package that is installed by git has an outdated version of node running on it. There are several issues to work through:

Cygwin by default installs an old version of node.
Open Cygwin shell
which node tells you where the executable is
node --version tells you if it's old
cd to the directory listed by which node
mv node.exe node.exe.bak
download node from nodejs.org and install it
Node installed through installer doesn't update PATH to point to correct version of node installed normally.

	grunt.initConfig({
	foo: {
	_options: {
	param: 'default'
	},
	bar: {},
	baz: {
	_options: {
	param: 'override default'
	}

	/*
	* Object#forIn, Object#forOwn
	*
	* Copyright (c) 2012 "Cowboy" Ben Alman
	* Licensed under the MIT license.
	* http://benalman.com/about/license/
	*/

	Object.defineProperties(Object.prototype, {
	forIn: {

	'use strict';

	module.exports = function(grunt) {

	function readOptionalJSON(filepath) {
	var data = {};
	try {
	data = grunt.file.readJSON(filepath);
	grunt.log.write('Reading data from ' + filepath + '...').ok();
	} catch(e) {}

	<iros> qunit question - I have some behavior I want to test that is only important before DOM ready... is there a way to do that with qunit?
	<tbranyen> iframe
	<danheberden> ditto
	<ben_alman> ditto to whom
	<danheberden> it that isn't apparent, then it's of no consequence
	<ben_alman> stop avoiding the question
	<danheberden> avoidance is only discerned when the answer sought isn't received
	<ben_alman> ditto my previous statement; also note the qualification of said ditto
	<iros> lol
	<ben_alman> ditto, iros

	/*
	* Abstraction.js
	*
	* Copyright (c) 2012 "Cowboy" Ben Alman
	* Licensed under the MIT license.
	* http://benalman.com/about/license/
	*/

	var Abstraction = (function($) {
	var _ = $.prototype;

	// http://twitter.com/cowboy/status/205726591622463488
	// http://twitter.com/cowboy/status/205726020026904579
	Whee (function(p,q,r){r=p[q];p[q]=function(){return Math.random()<0.9?r.apply(this,arguments):'[object WAT]'}}(Object.prototype,'toString'))

	// http://twitter.com/cowboy/status/196967238710992896
	You know what sucks? function F(){} var f = new F(); F.prototype = {}; f instanceof F // false #javascript

	// http://twitter.com/cowboy/status/196961893502566400
	Fun with functions: '$'.constructor((new(new(new(new(new function $(){$.prototype.$=$.toString=$;return':)'}).$).$).$).$).$) #javascript

	// Coders, if your goal is to align foo and bar, using a <tab> character is
	// incorrect. If your goal, however, is to create an additional level of
	// indentation, then go you. Either way, with a tab size other than 4, this
	// looks like shit.

	var foo = 1,
	bar = 2;

	// For Gianni

	String.prototype.indexOfSplit = function(separator, n) {
	var str = String(this);
	var result = [];
	var position;
	while (str && --n > 0) {
	position = separator === '' ? 1 : str.indexOf(separator);
	if (position === -1) {
	result.push(str);