I’m a newbie, and have been (attempting) to code since October 2015, and I’ve been mostly studying on Codecademy, and Free Code Camp.
At first, I was feeling great with HTML, CSS and even some Ruby, but my confidence completely shattered when it came to Javascript. Even after months of trying to study, I still feel like I don’t get it. After fighting through Free Code Camp, not only did I feel incredibly stupid, but got frustrated to the point where I almost threw my computer at the wall.
As of now, I’m taking a small break from Free Code Camp.
My goal is to be a Rails Developer, but after having so much trouble with just Javascript, a part of me wonders if it’s even worth it, if I even have a chance at getting into the industry.
While this was mostly to vent, if anyone has any great resources for Javascript beginners, let me know. Any help is appreciated.
Hi there. I feel your javascript pain. Have you been able to identify the parts you are struggling with? The bits I struggle with are what ‘this’ refers to and predicting the order of execution in NodeJS code. This is aftet 10+ years as a pro web developer. JS is a secondary skill but I have been trying to improve it recently.
Try and identify what it is you are not ‘getting’ and hopefully we can help
P.s many people will tell you that JS is a real mess of a language and this is partially true. Now that the ES6 version is here, its a good time to be learning as some of the weirdness has been addressed.
I feel better knowing I’m not the only one struggling with Javascript. And it makes me feel less stupid to hear that veteran developers have trouble with it.
Maybe it’s because I’m still a newbie, and everything looks weird to me, but I have trouble with the overall syntax and knowing what commands to use. Functions and if/else seems to be especially difficult for me to grasp.
I want to really understand javascript, and not just copy it down like in Codecademy or some tutorials. If there is a “Javascript for Absolute Morons”, let me know. Lol
I just wanted to say that I’m relatively new to the industry as well and you’re definitely not the only one struggling with JavaScript. The syntax issue is something that I have found challenging as well, coming from the land of HTML & CSS. Also, there are 3-5 different ways to get to the same end goal! & everyone has a different strategy/style, it seems.
All I can say is stick with it! Eventually things will click (that’s what I’m hoping anyhow )
Im a newbie as well. I haven’t had the opportunity, at work anyway, to do much with js, but I can say that it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me at times. The syntax is a little funky, pretty different from OOP. I think of myself as a slower developer. Sometimes it just takes time for it all to sink in before you have that holy shit moment. It’s tough to be a developer in that regard because things move so quickly, and we don’t give things time. You’ll get there. I hope I will as well Something I tend to do that limits me as simply look at code online and not really writing anything myself. I’ve been trying to look online at problems and actually doing them or at least thinking through how I’d do them. Design patterns are also pretty important. Most things have already been done and been optimized so when you come upon a problem, you may already have seen how it’s best implemented. Happy coding, bud!
JavaScript is a pretty horrible language. It is not a true “fully featured object oriented programing language”. It was originally designed to write small scripts to interact with HTML. Ruby, Python, or even PHP are better languages over all.
JavaScript allows and actively encourages some of the worst design patterns.
Stay away from it for anything but what it was made for, and that is HTML interactivity.
The syntax always trips me up. I’m always forgetting something. I’ve been doing the lessons on Codecademy and Code School, so I’m slowly getting better.
Slowly being the key word.
I’ll keep studying, until I get somewhere…Thanks for replying, and good luck on your coding too!
can try to use type script. I recently started learning angular 2 and examples are with typescript, and I think its ok, it has classes like other languages, also not hard to learn because its similar to other languages.
But actually I do not see javascript that hard. I mean I do not know well how somethings work, like prototype inheritance, but I code for 5 years with it and do not even need much to know that.
Of course I am not as good javascript developer as some others, but it is how it is, I hope I am good enough, because many also are not so good.
JavaScript does not have classes like other languages. As you even pointed out your self it has prototypal inheritance.
Angular is really horrible as it follows no traditional design patters. It is by the admission of the angular dev team a “model view whatever” framework.
It also does not have core data structures like integers, floats, arrays and hashes. The language only has “numbers” and it sees both arrays and hashes as “object”.
Just because JavaScript is popular doesn’t mean it’s good.
I have a year of experience with angular. I’m not sure I would agree that angular is horrible. It certainly has a steep learning curve but it definitely has it’s strengths.
It’s popular because it’s backed by google and it has a huge ecosystem of developers. So there’s a ton a support. Last I checked, it was the most used JavaScript framework for developing Single Page Web Applications (SPA).
Another popular framework out there is react.js. It’s used by Facebook and Instagram.
I would just like to point that you’ve been doing this for a few months. So relax . Just keep at it.
There are still JS concepts (like clojures) that I still don’t master. You’re never truly an expert. Javascript like other web technologies is evolving (slowly). For example, I’ve always thought prototype inheritance was a mess in JS. Well, in the latest specification, they made it easier by introducing a class statement:
Last thought: back in my day, in the mid-90s, there was no “freecodecamp”. I had to buy books (50$+) to learn anything. So you have that going for you. But unfortunately you have also a lot more to learn. It’s hard to be a full stack web developer these days.
Hard has advantages - the harder it is , the more room to outlearn the concurents.
Also, companies maybe should start split fullstack devs into frontend and backend devs for example, so then it would be easier to learn and it means cheaper to hire.
)
. Just keep at it.