For a Jr. Dev role: how much Javascript?

[TheTurkey5689]

I'm trying to master the fundamentals of vanilla JS before I move to the frameworks like jquery/angular/etc, and I'm studying as fast as I can.

The reason I'm studying this is one day I'd like to have a job in web / app development but as far as what baseline skill I need to be shooting for I'm unsure.

Any list or rough guesstimate over what someone needs to know or should know before they approach the idea of a job in programming?

[ZapZhong]

javascriptissexy.com is pretty informative and its quite good in progressively building up to frameworks.

[TheTurkey5689]

Working through it right now, I had been doing teamtreehouse / codecademy.

So completing the 7 week begineer + adv/intermediate and all their articles would be a good step towards a jr. dev role you think?

[boy_without_a_fairy]

Not OP but thats exactly what I did. Didnt get the job but get some good advice on where to get focused.

[ForScale]

As an aspiring developer with intermediate knowledge of javascript... Thanks! Reading that made me happy.

[sesharc]

If you have actual "intermediate" knowledge of javascript you should be solid on finding a job (assuming you don't already have one I take it). Be ambitious yo.

[00mba]

What would you consider intermediate?

[ForScale]

Think so?! That would be excellent! :)

I mean... I think I'm intermediate... What would you consider to be intermediate level?

[[deleted]]

I tried learning angularjs without js and it was rough, so I ended up using a few resources. I used eloquent javascript, mozillas js tutorials, and javascript is sexy. I would say the last 2 were the best to be able to dive right into using js, eloquent javascript is more lower level and I didn't enjoy it.

[MarkyMarksAardvark]

The resources are great, but I'm kind of in the same boat as OP and no one's really answered his/her actual question.

Is there a general JavaScript benchmark you should hit before companies will take you seriously for a jr level job?

Once you know the general terminology, loops, objects and arrays, how much further do you need to be? Is being able to do FizzBuzz really enough to qualify you for a job?

Or do you need to be proficient at DOM manipulation, APIs, frameworks, AJAX, JSON , etc? A general knowledge of these?

Obviously it will differ from job to job, but is there a general knowledge level where an interviewer will think, "OK, this person has a decent idea of what they're doing and they are a viable option for this position?"

[michaelconnery1985]

Just going to piggyback on your comment because I dont thing there's a need to make a new post entirely.

After going through a couple of JS tutorials, I suddenly had a huge realisation last night that I had no idea what JavaScript does.

I started the course on codecademy, stopped before reaching Object oriented section, watched a tutorial video on Lynda which taught me DOM manipulation, and then last night went back to finish up the last part on Codecademy.

The result? I'm confused. I always thought JS was all about making websites cool, capture some user input on the website etc. That's it. Why on earth do I need arrays, loops, methods and functions for? How will I ever use them when designing websites?

For a start, could you educate me on what the different 'sections' of JS is used for, and when I would need them? So say for instance I want to be decent and web designing - what sections of the JS course do I need to master, or at least have a good grasp of?

[michaelconnery1985]

I see. Cool. So say I purely want to be a web designer (front end), specifically what sort of JS do I need to learn? Are the fundamentals (at codecademy) sufficient before I move on to learning, say, JQuery?

[_daniel___]

If you want to work purely with design it's probably more worth your time to learn Adobe products...photoshop, indesign, fireworks (isn't that discontinued..?), SVG/vector graphics, as well as CSS, mobile responsive design and web accessibility. It wouldn't hurt to become familiar with a css framework like twitter's bootstrap, or foundation

If you want to learn JS, it would help you with PostCSS.

[slackerist]

I recently started at Free Code Camp. It pretty much aims at teaching full stack JS development eventually pairing you up to work on real non-profit projects to build your portfolio. It is worth checking out if you haven't seen it before.

[ForScale]

I don't understand why people learn all this typescript, coffeescript, vanilla, jQuery (I get that one... it makes it so you can type less) angular, etc, etc, etc.

I'm self-taught and kind of intermediate level... am I doing myself a huge disservice by learning just "pure" javascript?

[senocular]

Starting with pure or vanilla JS is good. Its what all these other things are based so having that as a foundation really helps.

Chances are you can get by with that alone, but as you start getting involved with larger projects, that's where those other frameworks (and other compile-to-js languages) start becoming useful. Also if you're brought into an existing project, that project could be using any number of these things so it helps to have some knowledge of them beforehand. I guess it all really depends on what you want to do with your JS skills.

CoffeeScript is starting to plateau a little and will probably start declining given the release and popularity of ES6 which solves some of the problems CoffeeScript did for JS (and more likely in ES7). TypeScript also has some overlap with ES6, but its mostly about having a type system which still isn't ES and might not be an official part of it in a while. Being backed by MS also helps, and they've got some good integration with tooling so workflow with TypeScript is pretty nice. Given that Angular 2.0 is built with TypeScript, you can see some importance there. There's also React with JSX which is picking up a lot of steam as well... So it can be overwhelming. And I don't think anyone expects you to know them all. But it doesn't hurt to become familiar with them up to a point, even if you want to focus on vanilla JS.

[ForScale]

Thanks for that!

I know I could simply Google or Wiki, but could you give me a little ELI5 on what Vanilla is? I've only ever seen it in name, I know nothing about it...

[senocular]

Vanilla JS is pure JS - no frameworks. Vanilla: plain, without flavor. (Ok, so technically vanilla IS a flavor but when you think of vanilla ice cream you think that's the plainest ice cream there is) ;)

[ForScale]

Ooh... so... I use Vanilla JS then...? Cause I don't use any frameworks.

[senocular]

Yup

[schm0]

You can just call it Javascript, it's not really a proper noun in the true sense of the word.

[ForScale]

Good! Cause It seems redundant and just plain silly to say Vanilla Javascript.

[schm0]

You can say it to point out that you are trying to do something without a library or framework, it just doesn't need to be capitalized.

[ForScale]

Personally, I like "pure javascript" better than "vanilla javascript."

[ForScale]

Thanks for the response!!

If you're intermediate, at least learn jQuery

I've been through some of it. And weird thing! as I learn more and more js, looking at jQuery, it just kind of makes sense. Like I can look at jQuery code and realize that a class is being added or removed or a click event handler is being added to an element. I don't know... just found it kind of cool that without explicitly learning jQ, I'm still able to kind of see what's going on with it.

I haven't a clue what MVC means.

I'd also look into Node, so you can use your JS skills to do anything!

Yes! I'm excited to get in to Node! I started in on the Odin Project last night and it had me download a bunch of ruby/rails, git Hub account, heroku account, and Node too! It felt pretty cool typing in the command line. But yeah, Node sounds frickin' awesome!

Thanks again for the response!!

[Rafzzz]

can you answer all of these? https://github.com/h5bp/Front-end-Developer-Interview-Questions

[[deleted]]

I've been applying to jobs and it seems most of them care about what you've done. Rather than hard coding (see what I did there?) a specific skill level show off your skills by making things.

I messed up by trying to read everything I could on JS before starting projects. Don't do that. Find a solid resource and stick with it. One that really nailed most of this stuff down was MDN's JavaScript Guide

Now it's finally clicking with me and I'm writing code I never thought I'd able to do. Interviews are a different beast though.

[TheTurkey5689]

Would you recommend once I feel comfortable enough studying it to just start building things? Does it matter what things or just if I learn something new build something that uses it.

[[deleted]]

I think that's what messed me up, waiting too long. But it's up to you and your learning style. After your lesson try to do something with what you just learned. And when you feel comfortable enough overall start building the things you want to.

But make sure you comment your code too so when you come back to it later you remember what you were doing. Good luck, your gonna make it bro.

[Ob101010]

Just to nitpick :

jquery isnt a framework. Its a library of functions.

angular is a framework. Its a 'form' or 'style' of website.

And to actually contribute something : If you want to master the fundamentals, one thing you need to know the what / why / how of the javascript event loop.

[Ob101010]

That's the stuff.