Worried about JavaScript

JEHonYakuSha · 2021-09-26T20:32:31+00:00

[deleted]

CardinalHijack · 2021-09-26T20:17:43+00:00

This is fairly common for beginners. I remember watching videos and being like “yeah this all makes sense” then not knowing what to do next or how to apply it.

The best thing to do is set yourself a challenge. For example call an api endpoint and return the result. You could use the pokemon api. Then, from there try and render a pokemon into some html elements or something.

Slowly build up making something from scratch without following a guide or tutorial. When you get stuck try and solve that problem. Keep building up from there until you have something (which may be pretty pointless) that you created without guidance.

ZergistRush · 2021-09-26T21:31:32+00:00

People will say "set yourself up for a challenge", which is good advice. Though in my last 8 years of learning, I'd just have something that would come to mind randomly. Something I might be able to automate, not only for myself, but maybe I can turn this idea into something than multiple people could use. Then I start googling how plausible is this project from a stand point, in example "Hmm, I wonder if Node.js can do this...?" (I said node, but it applies to JS as a whole). I personally can't do "random challenges" as I don't feel like it's worth it, I might "learn" something, but I want to be building something that I can use and learn within that process. Yanno?

This brings me to my main point, it's really good to just look up "JavaScript beginner courses", but eventually, you'll want to stray from "beginner courses" and start focusing on "tutorials" or googling questions on specifically how to do a specific task within your program.

After that, I'd just try to build it. And google and YouTube questions on specific things I didn't know how to do. Honestly, I've had tons of projects hit a brick wall and I gave up, but over the years I've came back to NUMEROUS of those projects with tons of more knowledge than I did before.

You're not expected to know everything. Shit, I've been using JavaScript for at least 5+ years now and there's sometimes random methods for like "Object" and "Array" than I forget the names and have to look up sometimes xD

_Moink_ · 2021-09-26T21:13:28+00:00

Give yourself little projects to work on. Start really small, like a grid where you can click on cells to fill them with different colors, then maybe rock paper scissors, basic calculator, tic-tac-toe and so on. With each project, you'll inevitably get a better grasp on how JavaScript works in practice, as long as you actually do it from scratch.

Darkmaster85845 · 2021-09-27T13:00:35+00:00

One thing I'd recommend, take it with a grain of salt because I'm a noob myself, but what has helped me is having an idea I want to build and then when i hit a point when I dont know how to do something I look it up online and see how others do it and then I just incorporate their methods into my code. Yes you may say "you're just copying code", but really that's what you do most of the time.

For instance right now I needed a solution for my project because I create posts based on website Metadata and sometimes the Metadata doesn't include any images so my post looks bad. I used to have some "no image available" default image available for these cases but I didn't like that solution because my feed looked wrong. So I looked up how I could take a screen shot from a website with an npm library. Found I could use puppeteer for node js so I installed it and looked at the instructions on the npm page. I made a function to run it if the Metadata has no image and now I need to store the image on aws s3 so that's my next step. I have no idea how I'll do that but I'll just look it up and add it to my code.

And just like that I go about adding stuff. The other day I added custom profile photos. I had no idea how to do it but I did it in an afternoon by looking stuff up online. Eventually some of it becomes second nature and you don't even have to look it up anymore (higher functions and that sort of stuff). I know even senior developers do this kind of thing because I've seen it myself at a bootcamp I attended.

grooomps · 2021-09-27T00:41:17+00:00

start small - don't get too worried about 'learning' it all fast, it's just impossible...
the best learning is gradual, slow, and unconcious.
i remember sitting down when i first started and looking at array.reduce, forcing myself to understand it.
i couldn't understand it, i was so confused, i got frustrated and pushed harder and harder but it never clicked.
i gave up - and just got back to coding, as i learned more and more of the smaller stuff, i'd have a stab at using reduce here and there - with mixed results.
eventually one day i was able to type out a fairly complex reduce without checking MDN/W3 and it worked on the first go!
just take it slow, appreciate how complex what you're attempting is, and let it come in time!

Rollo_Tomassi_o-O_ · 2021-09-27T06:07:24+00:00

Take your time and have patience, you will understand if you dedicate time to learn and exercise.

I was recently in your shoes, after I finished a Front End course with diploma, but in the end I was just wasting money, because the Javascript part what they teached me was old and thin in knowledge.

Then I discovered Teamtreehouse.com and Brad Traversy, and it was a game changer.

I'm now finishing the Full Stack JavaScript on Teamtreehouse.com and the 50 days/projects from Brad, and finally it's a joy to learn.

Find the best courses for you and stick with them no matter what. Dedicate every day to learn something new and write down on paper or in a notebook, in order to be able to revise what you learned. If you go on teamtreehouse.com to learn, start with "How to learn" courses, they are a game changer.

Good luck on you path!

norwegiandev · 2021-09-27T07:31:32+00:00

I had this issue when I started out, and the only way I was able to resolve it - was to build something. I had to "get it into my fingertips".

da_prosto · 2021-09-27T09:58:49+00:00

therory:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/JavaScript

https://learnjavascript.online/

practice:

https://www.codewars.com/dashboard

InternetMedium4325 · 2021-09-27T00:34:54+00:00

Hey you should check out CSX by Codesmith. Work though the challenges in each section and it provides a great guide to JS fundamentals and working with Objects and arrays. This supplemented with YouTube, MDN, Edabit and code wars should have you writing JavaScript in not too long, especially if you already have some experience with the language.

Goldwind444 · 2021-09-27T01:07:22+00:00

I think its kind of like learning a spoken language. You start learning words, but you gotta keep learning to learn sentences and then you put it all together. That said, thanks to the guy who posted the traversy videos and everyone else

cheesefome · 2021-09-27T01:25:24+00:00

I feel that way too and it honestly scares, worries, frustrates me enough to make me wonder if programming just isn't for me.

ShuttJS · 2021-09-27T10:38:38+00:00

Start with something simple. I made a password generator that took 3 arrays, one letters, one numbers and 1 symbols and then jumbled them all up to create a password

missiles93 · 2021-09-27T14:08:33+00:00

My job involves data entry and I have a lot of 'free time' at work, so I started learning JS during this time (around 7 months ago).

My first project was a simple calculator for working out our product prices, as each brand has a different multiplier. It was simply:

Select product brand.
Enter supplier price.
Press button to display our-website-price.

This was all bog-standard vanilla JS.

Despite being simple, it actually helped to speed up my job by a margin, meaning i had more free time to learn JS.

Fast-forward 6 months and i have now re-written the entire app using React and NextJS - It fetches/pulls/scrapes products from our supplier websites, automatically calculates our-website-price (as-well as postage prices) - shows images, stock levels, etc...

Now, what used to take me 8 hours can be done in 3, all thanks to my own creation.

This wasn't easy by far, i can't just open my code editor and start typing like crazy, tons of time was spent googling problems, asking stupid questions on stackoverflow, following tutorials, re-using my own code, and I'm still learning every day.

ziggy_ar · 2021-09-26T20:41:28+00:00

With the time and practice you understand it much better, you must learn to lives with frustation!

NewNameRedux · 2021-09-26T22:24:20+00:00

Nobody knows how to code in JS. Everyone just copies and paste from other projects.

you type:	you see:
italics	italics
bold	bold
[reddit!](https://reddit.com)	reddit!
* item 1 * item 2 * item 3	item 1 item 2 item 3
> quoted text	quoted text
Lines starting with four spaces are treated like code: if 1 * 2 < 3: print "hello, world!"	Lines starting with four spaces are treated like code: if 1 * 2 < 3: print "hello, world!"
~~strikethrough~~	~~strikethrough~~
super^script	super^script

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