same, I've complicated my code too much with many conditional statements.

http://javascript.info/

Can you please recommend a resource in which i could learn of all these tricks, such as this destructuring operator

that's what makes it so powerful. you can still go off and write your own methods/solutions to problems you encounter much like you would in java, but if you happen to know little tricks like these it can make the whole process much easier.

It probably means that once you've learned the methods you will find everything very easy as you've already built a strong foundation through java.

Haha, same. Had like 30 lines.

Not necessarily. However, knowing these approaches, JS lets you write shorter, terser and in most cases more bug-free code.
You can achieve a lot faster. At the expense of some performance, of course, when it matters. But most of the time performance is not an issue.

Writing your own code is not bad per se, but you do get more chances to get it wrong and let bugs sneak in.
Built in JS array & object methods are well tested and relying on them is pretty predictible and less bug-prone.

lol i gotta learn regex

why?

i believe performance is always the main concern; it isnt about looking cool and getting it in one line; that is clever yes but not best practice; best practice means most efficient and clear and scalable (which means if you want to add or remove a aspect of the code you dont have to rework on all aspects of the code only the aspect you want to) ALWAYS!!!!

lol

my dude i feel you i always feel like my solution is pretty good then i look at these solutions and i wanna quit coding.

lol what a guy; i hated kids like you in school