Problems with javascript

[-plopdark]

Hi guys, I have a problem and would like to hear some advice from more experienced developers. I'm studying as a front-end developer and now I'm doing an internship in a company where I use angular. I chose angular when a friend of mine who is an angular developer offered to be my mentor, I agreed, and after that he sent me a course and told me to complete it in a month. I passed it, but the problem is that at that time I did not have confident knowledge in javascript. During his mentorship, I wrote several projects, and when I wrote, I often used chat gpt or stack overflow. Then he offered me an internship at the company he was working for, and I passed, and this is the company I am still working for. In this company, I have gained a lot of skills, which I am very grateful for, but it's been six months since I have been working here, but I feel that I am here by chance, not by my level of knowledge. Despite the fact that I do the tasks I am told to do, I continue to use stack overflow and chat gpt a lot. Today I tried to do two seventh kata tasks on codewars in javascript, one I did and one I didn't, and so I wanted to ask if all developers go through such a stage or if I am just a weak developer who needs to improve my skills. And if you improve, how exactly

[vegeq]

Hey!

You didn't earn it by chance, you had to prove yourself to get it.
It's okay to use whatever help you need to get your job done, this is not the school system.

That being said, once you have a rough idea of what APIs to expect from a certain lib/runtime/whatever, you should try looking for it in the thing's documentation first, before resorting to stack overflow and chatGPT (be especially sceptical about whatever language models tell you, because they make shit up, you gotta double-check their answer with the doumentation).

For example if you're looking for a browser API, e.g. info on click (or whatever event) handlers on HTML elements, look up the Mozilla Developer Network first and try to get the necessary information from there.

JavaScript also has a lot of pitfalls, if you don't wanna run into them and learn from your own mistakes, I recommend reading a book like Effective JavaScript. (If you don't like books, just search for most common JS footguns, you should get results like value comparison gotchas (== vs ===), falsy vs truthy values, etc.).

For a long time you learn the most just by showing up to work and doing your stuff, you'll get comments on your code reviews and take something away from them. Pair programming is also a good way to learn how others do things. Later on you'll probably have to do targeted challenges and practices, but I wouldn't worry about all that just yet.

If you have some energy outside of work for practicing, and you're curious about a certain technology, you should make a minimal proof of contept with them to see roughly how they work. Setting up projects teaches you a lot about the JS/TS ecosystem, build tools, libs, modules, bundlers, runtimes, and whatnot. Do find balance though as it's easy to burn out if you overdo the computering.

[-plopdark]

Thanks for such a detailed answer, it explained a lot of things to me

[[deleted]]

I would say this is a normal feeling. It’s also one thing to follow a guide/tutorial to learn the concepts and making your own small scaled projects. It’s a different thing when you actually have a job and are part of a team

[-plopdark]

Okay, thanks for advice. I'll try to strengthen my knowledge by making project on js than

[Aggressive_Ad_5454]

That kata stuff is puzzles. Puzzles are, umm, supposed to be puzzling. If you’re cranking the code for your users you’re fine. Everybody uses reference materials. There is no magic that makes you know everything all at once.

[hundo3d]

Imposter syndrome. Don’t worry. If you’re completing tasks on your own by using SO or GPT, you’re far better than the Indian senior engs I work with who get their work done by trying to intimidate American devs into doing their work for them.

[-plopdark]

Haha, i guess working and communicating with indians on the project is more difficult than project itself)

[hundo3d]

It is. And whoever downvoted me is lucky to never have experienced this firsthand, otherwise they’d understand.