You need to understand JavaScript callbacks

Notice: This post is irrelevant nowadays, had I learnt JS data and objects correctly since the beginning this wouldn't have been a real problem. Promises are WAY better anyway.

Here I will share something I realized I learnt only after learning it. That is the fact that if you want to program fluently in JS you need to understand and know by heart JavaScript's callbacks.

I do want to point out that I did know callbacks were important, but I didn't realize just how powerless you are when programming in JS and you don't know your callbacks.

So that's the lesson I've learned. Now I'm going to teach to you what callbacks are.

Let's start with the definition of callback, in terms of JS. A "callback" is, in the simplest of the English language, what to do after the function has been executed. That is the callback.

So let's look at the code:

function x(a, callback) {
	var b = a + 5;
	return callback(a);
}

What that code does is add a and 5 and give them to the callback. So this function would be used the following way:

x(5, function(bap){
	console.log(bap); // returns 10
});

Do you see the connection that is happening? Before I go on I just want to make a couple of points. The callback should be an anonymous function, I'm not sure if this is required or not but after reading a lot of code this is the only way that I've seen it, so I'm assuming it's the only way possible. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Secondly, the name of the argument that you use in the anonymous function can be named anything, also the variable that you give to callback can be named anything.

OK so to explain what is happening here, it's basically running function x() which is assigning the value of 5 + 5 to a var b and that var b is being passed to the callback. The callback receives the value of b and names it bap (in this example) and then logs to the console the value of bap.

They're as simple as that, but I never saw an explanation like this. I did understand that callbacks were what was done after the function was executed and the results were available, but I never understood the process that it took in order to give the anonymous function the value and what values were used by the anonymous function.

I hope this post helps you understand callbacks, even if just a little. Please correct me if I said anything bad or incorrect.