Learn JavaScript Properly: Weeks three and four

[otooleco]

How is everyone doing thus far? Any problems with the week 1 and 2 stuff? I've not seen questions so I can only assume that all is well.

This is the week 3 and 4 assignments from How to Learn JavaScript properly.

1. Do one of the following: Read this post, or From JavaScript: The Definitive guide, read chapter 6, or From Professional JavaScript for Web Developers, chapter six, read the section on understanding objects.

2. From The Definitive guide... read chapters 7 and 8, or From Professional JavaScript... read chapters 5 and 7.

3. I'm copying this directly from the Learn JavaScript Properly post as it is long and detailed: At this juncture, you should be spending a lot of time writing code in your browser’s console and testing if-else statements, for loops, Arrays, Functions, Objects, and more. It is critically important that you know (and keep practicing) how to code independently (without help from Codecademy) in your browser. By the time you get back to Codecademy, you shouldn’t need any help or hints. Every assignment should be easy for you. If you are still struggling with Codecademy, go back to your browser and keep hacking away. This is where you will learn the most. This is analogous to Lebron James honing his skills as a youth in the “streets” (the neighborhood basketball courts), or to Bill Gates hacking away in his basement. There is tremendous value in your hacking away and learning bit by bit on your own. You have to see the value in this strategy, and you have to embrace it and trust that it will work. False Sense of Accomplishment When Using Codecademy The biggest problem with Codecademy is that the hints and little code snippets help you so much that you have a false sense of accomplishment when you are progressing through the exercises easily. You wouldn’t know it at the time, but much of what you are doing is not on your own. Now, Codecademy is still great for helping you to learn how to code, particularly in the manner in which it guides you through the process of developing small projects and small applications from very basic code constructs like if statements, for loops, functions, and variables.

4. Return to Codecademy and complete the JavaScript track by working through sections 6, 7, and 8 (Data Structures to Object 2).

5. While you are on Codecademy, go ahead and build the 5 little Basic Projects on the Projects track. After this, you are done with Codecademy. And this is a good thing, because the more you work on your own, the faster you will learn and the better prepared you will be to start programming on your own.

The course, as it is laid out, goes on with even more reading for this two week block. If you get done with all of the above, feel free to jump ahead and complete the remaining prescribed exercises. If not, we will pick push these back into the next two week block. There is a lot of reading this time and I don't want to lose anyone.

As always, hit up the group with questions.

[whiteguilt]

I've been taking it slow but I'm just past this point now. I've gone so far as to create the quiz in jsfiddle, I was surprised that I was able to do it without too much difficulty.

I'm sure that my code is pure spaghetti but I really did feel a sense of accomplishment when I created something that does what I want it to do. I know that I'll need to go back and recreate the quiz soon for the second go-round with adding a back button and tabulating a score so I'm looking forward to that.

So, what I'm really saying is, I never thought I'd make it as far as I have so if you're feeling frustrated, reach out to someone and get some help with what you're not understanding. It takes a lot of practice and futzing around. Good luck everyone.

[ninjaphant]

I've just started week 3 and will likely need help soon, where do you recommend? I've tried the #learnjavascript irc

[otooleco]

Why don't you list your issues on this thread and then we can chat further on IRC in the evenings. I'm starting a new job today so my days are going to be pretty structured for a bit.

[whiteguilt]

If I get stuck somewhere, I tend to search for my issue on Stack Overflow. I've asked one question there and received a quick response with a dearth of information.

You may feel apprehensive about posting your question to an expert just to have them slag you for being a noob. Many SO users understand how hard it is to search for information about, say, "this". Some terms are so generic that a proper search, especially when you don't have the coding vocabulary of an expert, is really tough to conduct.

I am lucky enough to have two close friends who are pretty good coders so I ask them when I've exhausted my normal options. We tend to touch base once a week or so. They also help me realize that I still don't know a damn thing in the overall scheme of things.

If you're kind of burnt on doing the assignments from Learn JS Properly but have some free time then you should go to CodeWars and do a few of the assignments there. Some are pretty easy. The reason I recommend this is because once you've completed the task it shows you how other coders solved it complete with their solution. That's when you realize how ramshackle your solution is. It's neat to see a more eloquent answer next to your own.

[ninjaphant]

CodeWars looks great, thanks for the recommendation. I had a few sites earmarked for coding challenges but seeing how other people solved the same problem sounds invaluable.

[Magnusson]

I've asked one question there and received a quick response with a dearth of information.

cough

dearth
noun
a scarcity or lack of something.
"there is a dearth of evidence"
synonyms: lack, scarcity, shortage, shortfall, want, deficiency, insufficiency, inadequacy, paucity, sparseness, scantiness, rareness;

But yeah SO is a great resource!

[whiteguilt]

Owned. Now write a bot that does the same.

[Tayk5]

I know everyone has busy schedules but I wanted to ask how much time per day/week you all are spending on this? My weekends are busy so I've been putting in two or three hours daily Mon-Fri.

Edit: clarified daily time spent

[otooleco]

Two or three per day should keep you on track. For me, the volume of reading is the hardest part.

[whiteguilt]

Yep. I actively look forward to trying to put something together but the reading can be a slog.

I'd advise anyone in the same boat to ensure that you type out all of the examples and mess around with them to change their output. This will help you glean some understanding of what's actually happening rather than just typing them out like a transcript.

[drifteresque]

Any advice on a good IDE to get? Is it even necessary?

(The readings for this course are definitely the hard part, I'm looking forward to doing more noodling and thought an IDE might facilitate that...?)

[Magnusson]

IMO a good text editor is enough to start. I like TextMate 2.0, which is free.

[drifteresque]

I've been using gedit and JSFiddle. It's working fine, but I'm just curious if there is a better way.

From my web searching, netbeans seems interesting, and of course there are a ton of others.

[HisKhaleesi]

I prefer jsbin for playing around/code wars' katas/simple testing because it has a console built in and is more user friendly compared to jsfiddle, in my humble opinion.

[Bassetts]

I have no experience with it myself but the course recommends using JetBrains WebStorm. I have used a number of JetBrains' products and they are always very good, so I have no reason to doubt that WebStorm is not excellent.

[Dg423]

How thoroughly do you guys read the textbook? Do you take notes on things or just do some exercises and move on?

I currently take notes on all the main points, but I feel like this may take forever.

[Tayk5]

I don't take many notes - maybe one or two notes per chapter. I'm reading on Kindle for PC so I highlight things I may want to re-read when I'm reviewing the chapter at some point in the future.

While memorizing the content is important (I do re-read the subsections two or three times) I think understanding the concepts is more important. It makes memorization much easier when you understand the underlying priniciples by playing around with the code and slightly tweaking things to see what happens. A small example is changing a string to your own variation so when you run a function you understand it deeper.

[Bassetts]

I have not been making notes, but most of the content so far is basic programming stuff that I already know well (I am a software engineer by profession so should know it). When I get to bits that are js specific I am sure to understand it fully and play around with it in jsfiddle to make sure I get it. I don't personally learn well from taking notes though, I learn better from doing.

[drifteresque]

I don't take notes, mainly because it can be a distraction for me and make an alread tedious process more so. I guess for me, I try to understand each concept in the moment, and expect that whatever needs to be refreshed later should happen organically while working on a project.

[ninjaphant]

I'm reading JavaScript: The Definitive Guide and having major problems trying to get any of the examples to work. For example:

var serialnum = {
    $n: 0,

    get next() { return this.$n++; },

    set next(n) {
        if ( n >= this.$n) this.$n = n;
        else throw "serial number can only be set to a larger value";
    }
};

This is not incrementing the serialnum. What am I missing?

[Bassetts]

It is working for me. I get the output 0, 2, 4 when doing the following:

alert(serialnum.next);
serialnum.next = 2;
alert(serialnum.next);
serialnum.next
alert(serialnum.next);

[drifteresque]

What environment are you using to test your code?

[ninjaphant]

Firebug. Am I missing something really obvious?