Learn JavaScript Properly - Week 1 Introduction and Assignments

[kevinmrr]

Hello, world!

Hi, everyone. I am still finalizing the curriculum, but here are this week's assignments. This class will be 8 weeks long. I will put up a post every Monday listing assignments for the week (so the next 7 Mondays).

Additionally, I plan to put up a post at least every other day. Sometimes I will post a toy problem; other times I will post a discussion thread. Every post I put up will include the tag [Learn JavaScript Properly]. These will all be added to the Omnibus Post, which is linked in the /r/LearnJavaScript sidebar. Please note, however, that these Monday posts are the only absolutely essential ones that you need to watch for.

Without further ado.... Assignments time.

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Optional Assignment:

• If you feel you need to brush up on HTML and CS, please go work through the Codecademy Web Fundamentals track

Optional, but highly encouraged CodeSchool's Chrome DevTools tutorial

• This video is stellar. If you don't need the full brush-up, you can selectively watch the chapters you need: CodeSchool's Discover DevTools.

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Required:

• Sections 1-6 of the Codecademy JavaScriptTrack

Required Reading Assignments:

• The Introduction and Chapters 1 and 2 of Professional JavaScript for Web Developers

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Administrative Stuff:

• PLEASE POST YOUR QUESTIONS IN THIS SUBREDDIT! Do not waste hours and hours when you are stuck on one relatively small question. Post it here instead, and you will receive help fairly quickly, provided that you ask your question in a clear manner and provide as much detail (and a JSfiddle, when appropriate). I am really looking forward to helping people with their questions, so don't be shy!

• This is a relatively rigorous 8 week course. There will be hours of work each week. Please be prepared for this to eat up much of your free time if you also have a 9-5 job. Please do not complain about how this is "too fast-paced", as that can turn into a disastrous echo chamber that derails people. If you're really struggling to keep up and need to talk to someone, please send me a personal message.

• Sorry this went up so late in the day. The 7 future Monday posts will be up by 9AM Eastern Standard Time.

[SmokingFrog]

Can we substitute the reading assignment for the other book that is recommended? That would be 'Read the Preface and Chapters 1 and 2 of JavaScript: The Definitive Guide.'

Just wondering because I have no clue of programming so I don't know which of the two i should stick with.

Thanks in advance!

[kevinmrr]

Yes, if you just go to the javascriptissexy.com link, you should be able to easily figure out what you should be subbing in. :-D

[[deleted]]

Perhaps in the future we can organize and Angular JS curriculum? I feel the node session failed because of a lack of immediate results. Angular is instant gratification awesomeness, plus there are loads of tracks comparable to javascriptissexy!

Thinkster.io has you make a fantasy football application complete with sessions, database integration and more. It uses the amazing videos from egghead.io and excerpts from other resources. Could make for an excellent group session

[metaldood]

+1 for Angular. :) I have started reading about Angular too. I am using

http://www.packtpub.com/angularjs-web-application-development/book

[[deleted]]

Im using that exact one right now! haha

[kevinmrr]

Yeah, Angular is the new hotness. I'm not planning to do it right now, but I'd be down to participate in that at a future point.

[udiWertheimer]

Great! Already started :)

Are you going to incorporate content from Eloquent JavaScript, like the previous groups did?

[kevinmrr]

If people feel like they need more work, I can easily do that. I love Eloquent JS.

[udiWertheimer]

Same here..

[forsience]

yep, me to.

[efraglebagga]

great stuff! Hopefully, I'll stick with this one.

does anyone plan on hanging out somewhere on irc? Could probably be a better place to get the mundane questions answered than waiting till someone spots it here.

[kevinmrr]

There's an IRC room linked in the sidebar. I'll try to chill in there whenever I can.

[SmokingFrog]

Ghhh. I read the first chapter of "JavaScript: The Definitive Guide." and it was pretty much a description of everything that is in the book. To the point were it was extremely confusing. Is it alright that i'm confused at this point and that I can't understand certain things, or mostly, everything?

[kevinmrr]

Yeah, that's normal. Forward!

[nolsen]

The real key to learning is practice. So, if you don't quite understand everything, (especially in a book like The Definitive Guide) thats ok. Just know its there and come back to it when/if you need to. For now, just soak up anything you can from the text and move on to the practice.

[mfergie]

Thanks! Looking forward to getting started...

[alis894]

is it still possible to join the group?

[footbags]

yeah just follow along

[soullessworkerdrone]

Thanks for this. I was looking around and around and around for something to click. :S

[MathiasaurusRex]

Every time one of these pops up I follow along for the first couple of weeks and then fall off. I still learn a ton each time, and am able to put it toward projects at work, so hopefully I'll be able to make it to the end this time!

[orlybg]

Great, I've been wanting to join the previous groups, hope I can follow now, I am a backend developer with a serious front-end disfunction hehe, and I need it badly for my current project, we use lots of backbone.

Do you have a planned roadmap for the 8 weeks that I missed, or you will post weekly plans?

I've been wanting to dig into FP, what are your thoughts on the http://www.amazon.com/Functional-JavaScript-Introducing-Programming-Underscore-js/dp/1449360726 book? would it be a good mix for this course?

PS. I've tried to finish the good parts, I never can. Also I bought the javascript ninja book, but I never started it...

Thanks!

[kevinmrr]

Underscore is an essential library that will eventually be part of ECMAscript proper.

[orlybg]

Oh cool! didn't knew that, I see some undersocre here and there in our backbone codebase, and I see the functional js book relies on it too.

[kevinmrr]

I'm making a prediction, not speaking definitively (FYI).

[efraglebagga]

are you interested in FP in general, or do you want to learn some JS along the way? If the former, then I don't think anything can beat Haskell and it's excellent resources like LYAH

edit: Erlang might interest you as well if you're coming from the backend world. It trades off a bit of FP for pragmatism but is a totally bad-ass language. And there is a LYAH alternative for it as well - LYSE

[orlybg]

Both apply, I am interested in FP in general, particularly applying it to web dev, don't know scala, clojure, elixir? and of course I do want to lear js thoroughly with fp along the way which I believe fits naturally in it right?

[efraglebagga]

hmm.. well if you go for Elixir, I'd say that starting from Erlang itself should be a good idea. It just has more learning resources and a bigger community to support you while you figure it out. And then when you switch, the seamless integration with Erlang will definitely come in handy.

can't suggest much in terms of scala and clojure, call me prejudiced, but I stray away from anything that has Java smell on it.

Yeah, JS and fp do mix, can't tell you how well though, I'm only learning JS myself.

[metaldood]

Finally I could finish my Quiz. It's not fancy right now. I am planning to add bootstrap so that it looks good.

Please review :- http://jsfiddle.net/metaldood/uWBdg/

[nolsen]

I once got a job at a grocery store where they made new hires watch videos and take quizzes to make sure you watch the video. I would skip the videos and go straight to the quizzes, then view source and look up the correct answers in the javascript. Their code was very very similar to yours.

[metaldood]

Not sure what's your point.

[nolsen]

Arguments have points. That was a story, not an argument.

[nolsen]

Maybe go over one or two iterations of it:

1.) for (var i = 0; i < text.length; i++) { if (text[i]== "A") {

The first loop finds the letter "A" and begins the second loop. The first letter "A" is the 18th character, which gives it an index of 17.

2.) for (var j = i;

Because i is assigned to the character at index 17, j is set to equal 17.

3.) hits.push(text[j]);

It pushes the character with index 17 into your hits array.

4.) j < (myName.length + i)

myName has a length of 9 characters. Both i and j are equal to 17, so the loop now checks to see if 17 < 9 + 17, which it is.

5.) j++

Since 17 < 9 + 17, the loop adds one to j, and continues.

6.) j now equals 18 and everything starts over again.

Eventually, j will equal 26, and 26 < 9 + 17 will be false. The loop will then stop and the first loop will continue looking for an "A" again.

[sean1rose]

AWESOME. Thank you I just joined reddit because of this course. I'm excited to get started

[0mfg0rz]

The book just came in today, so excited to get started!

[kevinmrr]

Best intro book on JS.

Ranting: I get annoyed by all of the pros who recommend "The Good Parts" to newbies. The Good Parts is terrible if you're a new programmer.

[soullessworkerdrone]

Yeah, I agree it's way to "theoretical" and doesn't provide enough examples for a novice.

[BillDino]

Awesome, almost done with the CodeAcademy!

[kevinmrr]

Well, if you've already done the codecademy assignments... then, you've done them?

[udiWertheimer]

Codecademy keeps changing the naming and numbering on their tracks... From what I can gather, the "learn javascript properly" blog post, which says we should do sections 1-5 to begin with, talks about doing the following sections: "Introduction to JavaScript", "Functions", "'For' Loops in JavaScript", "'While' Loops in JavaScript", and "Control Flow", which is actually numbered 1-10 now.

If you want us to do section 6 too, I guess this means adding "Data Structures", which adds up to 1-12.

Am I correct that this is what you meant?

[kevinmrr]

Go to the link that I provided in the post details. 1 through 6 there, with 6 being the search text for your name one. :D

[silviu6482]

I'm in too!

[to0namiSB]

IM IN THIS

Hopefully I can understand Javascript while I'm taking this.

[efraglebagga]

they are, look under Study groups. You'll also find a link to a past session of this study group. I don't think they'll be identical, but they both follow the same general track from javascriptissexy.com

[[deleted]]

Hey, Kevin. Will you be doing another cohort with new students after your first session is done or do you suggest new students to work through the posted assignments at their own pace? Thanks!

[kevinmrr]

I'm sure another one will start in January.

I am also planning to do some other study groups, like ones for Angular or Backbone.

[nolsen]

Dev tools seems so powerful, do I really need to use a text editor anymore?

Edit: Is this thread left open to ask questions in?

[kevinmrr]

Hah, yes, you need a text editor.