If you’ve been coding in JavaScript for more than a day, you’ve probably asked yourself, ‘What on earth is this ‘this’?' Time to make sense of it all with arrow functions.
If you would like to follow along what I’m learning from, I’m using the Mozilla JavaScript Documentation, specifically the JavaScript Guide. Currently we are on the section of Functions, subsection Arrow Functions. In these blogs I simply read, type, and try to understand the information presented to me. If I need more information on something, I will ask ChatGPT for assistance, and type down what useful information I have gained from it to also help you, the reader, in a teaching style manor.
An arrow function expression (also called a fat arrow to distinguish from a hypothetical -> syntax in future JavaScript) has a shorter syntax compared to function expressions and does not have its own this, arguments, super, or new.target. Arrow functions are always anonymous*.
Two factors influenced the introduction of arrow functions: shorter functions and non-binding of this.