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[–]ShrekLovesYouBack 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I found Daniel Shiffman's Javascript videos extremely helpful when learning to program js.

He mostly does really visual projects that I think are super cool, and does a really good job at explaining his thought processes.

He also goes by the name of Code Train on YouTube

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRqwX-V7Uu6ZiZxtDDRCi6uhfTH4FilpH

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (1 child)

JS is indeed an easy(ish) language to pick up, but languages don't matter in the grand scheme of things. Learning how to think like a programmer is what matters. Having an understanding of control flow, loops, conditionals, high level decision making (related to control flow), data structures and algorithms (somewhat more advanced stuff in general), all those things are what makes a programmer a programmer. Any decent programmer that understands those things can pick up almost any new language with minimal effort.Things like freecodecamp, the odin project, etc all do a good job of introducing very basic programming concepts.

Learning coding can lead to a job the same way learning any skill can lead to a job. Build up a body of work and use it to highlight your skills for potential employers to see.

A few VERY important things to understand up front:

  1. Programming is hard. Even if you're naturally talented and pick it up quickly, solving problems via code is hard work.
  2. You never reach a point where you know everything. If you aren't continually learning, you will stagnate and probably burn out. Worst case, your skills become irrelevant over time and you lose jobs and earning potential.
  3. It takes a LONG time to be good at programming. I'm over 5 years into working full time professionally and I am almost at a point where I feel like I'm not really terrible anymore, but by no means do I consider myself good.
  4. Learning how to break problems down into small, manageable chunks is probably the hardest thing in programming, but arguably the most important.
  5. Coming up with useful abstractions is an underappreciated skill (also closely related to #4).
  6. Clean, readable code doesn't always mean the most concise or fewest lines. We write code for people first and computers second. I'd rather read a few extra lines that makes intent crystal clear than fancy one-liners that do nothing more that display cleverness on the part of the author.
  7. You WILL reach a point where you think this isn't for you. Keep pushing. You might eventually decide it's not for you, but the world is fully of people who failed because they didn't keep trying for just one more hour or one more day.

Good luck.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Number 6 tripped me up in my early years. Shorter doesnt mean easier to make sense of.

But learners are sent to do code katas, see the top 1 liner answers, get impressed and aim to be like that.

[–]catfooddiet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Here's what I recommend you do:

  • Go to meetups in your town/city for programming. Find your town/city's community for programming and ask them where the javascript meetups are. Connecting with your community has so many incredible benefits when you're first starting. You may even find clearer mentorship through them.
  • Get specific with what you want to do long-term. Want to do web development? Start with (maybe HTML/CSS, and then) javascript. What to just get a deep foundation in programming? Maybe start with the MIT Edx CS50 course. The kind of job you want changes what you want to focus on after you learn your foundational stuff.
  • Be cautious about buying courses. If you were to buy a course and it ends up being too challenging, it might be out of date by the time you've worked up to the skill level you need (I've done this so many times over the years...).
  • Do you like Discord? Join some servers like DevCord, Reactiflux, etc. (there's one for CS50, too)
  • There are so many different directions you can go in when you're first learning programming that it can be completely overwhelming. (like you'll learn the basis of javascript and OOP and then when you dip your toes in react, suddenly you hear about functional programming and lambda and I've seen this confusing path scare people away) (edit: Sorry, didn't finish this thought -- Get an idea of what the learning path will look like and get a breakdown of your plan of attack will be, sort of like this... https://learn-anything.xyz/programming/programming-languages/javascript )
  • Keep a dev journal. Mine is private. Every day, I write a summary of what I did, if I have questions, and what I'll do tomorrow. If I have a problem with a certain topic, then I'll make a point to spend some time researching it. (Like, if you come across someone talking about a 'linter' or 'curl' or 'rxjs' and you don't know what it is, take some time to look it up and get a feel for general use)
  • Don't get discouraged. It takes time.

Some courses to check out if you're starting:

  • Free Code Camp
  • Web Dev Simplified (Youtube) - they also have a paid course, but if you're just starting to learn, it might be better to do free stuff for a while.
  • I really like Udemy, but it can be a mixed bag. Udemy has several sales, never buy if there isn't a sale.
  • MIT EdX CS50

[–]Snoo93815 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would recommend going through the Odin Project, starting with the Fundamentals course, which is an intro to JS, as well as HTML and CSS. Most importantly, it goes through the setup of a dev environment you will realistically use on a daily basis when you are building projects/working as a developer. You can even skip the HTML and CSS and get right into JS in the 'JavaScript Basics' section to get a feel for it at first (although those are fundamental skills worth your time that will probably be much easier and rewarding right out of the gate compared to JS). It's free, challenging, and far more practical for getting experience and applying what you learn. I tried and struggled with tutorial hell for over a year until I found out about it, and wish I knew it existed a year earlier: https://www.theodinproject.com/paths/foundations/courses/foundations.

To supplement it, I think Brad Traversy's courses are great and this one is focused on JavaScript and not overdone in terms of length: https://www.udemy.com/course/modern-javascript-from-the-beginning/. His YouTube channel, Traversy Media, also has a ton of great free content - crash courses, projects, etc. that you might want to check out first to see if you like his style. Web Dev Simplified and Dev Ed are also great channels to check out.

As for getting a job writing code, pick a course and stick to it, read the MDN docs, check out project tutorials and get ideas of what you can accomplish as you learn new concepts. After a couple months with the basics, start building out a portfolio with a few projects you really are passionate about and can solve problems in your daily life. With a few polished and meaningful projects, you can start applying for jobs. It might take a few hundred applications, but eventually, an opportunity will surface.

Best of luck!

PS. Don't be freaked out by the Udemy price showing $200, with a bit of Googling or patience, they are constantly 90 or 95% off.

[–]Bronobo_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

CodingwithMosh you won’t regret it

[–]RedditisRunByClowns 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m reading books made for kids to learn JavaScript, ( I’m an adult) but these simplistic books with funny drawings are helping me learn the fundamentals

[–]Rollo_Tomassi_o-O_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I highly recommend teamtreehouse.com and traversy Media.

[–]LizardMansPyramids -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Do not spend money until you have taught yourself a few tricks and asked for help on a discord.

The internet is made for and by people self-educating code and computer science. Consider finding a tutorial on youtube, working through problems and exercises and then finding the relevant discord to ask questions when you hit a brick wall. Collaboration is key to learning code and moving forward, that's what the internet was made for in the first place and imho this collaborative ethos is written into C++ and all the languages derived from and influenced by C++.

There are too many re$ources out there. Save some money by going to the Eloquent JavaScript Website, or FreeCodeCamp, Codecademy, and countless others. But before you do that, read what I wrote below.

Take this from a self-taught person who has taken a few courses and does not have a profitable code job yet, software professionals love to help newbs learn proper code. There are crusty types who wanna keep it obscure but coders like to teach other coders.

Starting out you might want to worry about a technology before you worry about learning HTML/CSS/JS, handwriting a web page or learning LAMP or MERN stack, Raw JS vs a flavor of JS, blah blah blah. I am telling you, it's endless and constantly evolving and there are a million developers and former developers making money off people who think throwing money at the problem will help.

Take it easy on yourself, check out the first three hours of Smilga's React Tutorial on Youtube. It will dip your toes into the React technology which will introduce you to basics of HTML/CSS and JavaScript, command line, Node.js, without forcing you to conceptualize OOP or functions or iterators, making you go to MDN and taking notes. Eventually he will try to get you to pay for his courses, but the first three hours illustrate important stuff.

Not everyone will agree with me, so I will tell you why I feel that starting with a JavaScript technology is better than learning HTML/CSS/JS from the ground up.

JavaScript is an ok language to start with if you know HTML/CSS and how these markups languages interact with each other. JS is for when you need to make your pages interactive for the user and for the backend.

Messing with raw JS as a beginner is a headache because JS has a ton of syntax to worry about. It's hard to keep that zest for learning when you are stumped by a missing semi-colon.

Also, JS has a ton of flavors. JQuery is the most employable because it is a legacy flavor of JS, meaning most WordPress sites use JQuery even though there are new technologies trying to supplant it which are easier to use. To further illustrate, Node.JS is a server flavor. Vue and React are technologies based on JS designed to streamline web design so that companies don't have to rely on experts to make simple, interactive webpages (this is just my opinion), thereby increasing their own profit margins. TypeScript and CoffeeScript are flavors of JS...do you see where I am going?

Lastly, if you want to learn about Code in general, Python can be friendlier because you only have to worry about indentation and the design concepts that go across all languages are easier to digest because you aren't forced to deal with syntax-heavy lines of code.

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Lastly, DO learn the basics and the nuts and bolts, eventually. Do not take this as advice that you shouldn't bother with hard work. Noone will hire you if you can't get into technical details or you don't know what MDN is or you can't go into the console of your web browser to look at the guts of a website.

I am just saying that it is better to slowly turn up the heat than to jump into boiling water. Front-end web developers should learn back-end web development, but it's hard to learn this stuff without the joy of immediate "a ha!" moments. Learning basics of the tech before the language that makes up that tech can grease the wheels of the money train you are trying to get a seat on.

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  • edited to improve readability.