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JavaScript

Posted by Jonathan Franklin
Jonathan Franklin
3,883 Points

Finished JavaScript basics but feeling lost

I finished the js basics course but yet I feel lost. At the end of each topic when it was time to complete the challenge I didn't know how to go about said challenges. I would have to watch the solution to understand how to complete them and it seems as if other users were able to complete the challenge without having to look at the solution. I took my time going through the course and reading other users comments and googling the questions I had but yet I still feel lost. I feel I have little knowledge of the basics and I know it's super important to have a firm understanding in order to proceed with js. I'm currently in the front end dev track so I know I barely got my feet wet with js. I read that it's normal to feel like this with your first programming language but I feel like I'm well below of those beginner standards. I've been reading bits of "You Don't know JS: Up and Going" and I'm looking into other beginner js books. Any tips, advice for a super beginner who is brand new to this world and is feeling super helpless?

Vlad Legkowski
Vlad Legkowski
9,882 Points

Mate, I've been exactly in the same spot, had no clue what I was learning and how to apply it in real life. But trust me, in the future it will all make sense, at the end you will "connect the dots".

I am not in the position to give advice, as I am by no means a good coder, but what I think I did right, I skipped the jQuery and continued to learn "Vanilla", Pure JS. And now I can say that I can pretty much do any kind of DOM manipulation using pure JavaScript (with BIG help from Google), and I am sure you will be able to do the same soon.

1 Answer

Samuel Ferree
Samuel Ferree
31,723 Points

Your first programming language is going to be like this. I remember back when I was learning C++, I felt like I was just faking it with functions and classes. I knew that I could copy and paste bits, and after "guess and check" programming I could usually get something that kind of works but I never really felt like I understood why. It takes a while to really get a grasp for what's going on.

The good news is that the solution is very simple:

Read a lot of code, and write a lot of code. Books are great, courses are even better, but there's no substitute for writing some code, and seeing big error messages pop up in the console. It sounds counter intuitive, but really we learn so much more by failing. You're also never going to get to a point where you have to stop looking things up. I'm a full time full stack web engineer, and looking things up is about half of what I do. If it weren't for scripts and re-shoots, treehouse teachers would constantly be looking stuff up in documentation or guides.

This is why treehouse teachers will usually suggest taking a project you built in a course, and adding one to it. Just a little extra feature that takes it one step further.

Alexander Davison
Alexander Davison
65,469 Points

Great answer :+1:

Joseph Torres
Joseph Torres
6,282 Points

Hello Samuel, great answer. I feel the same way right now as a matter of fact. My account is paused for financial reasons so I'm using almost every other resource under the son and I feel LOST. I mean I understand many of the concepts believe me but I feel lost for some reason. I have to be honest, I dont code as often as I should and I use video tutorials more often than not and that may be part of the reason. There's just something I'm not getting here. FreeCodeCamp, CodeAcademy don't really seem to help too much. I do have a project in mind but I kind of want to wait until I know JS but I know that's ridiculous. What advice can you help me with?? BTW, I heard the book Eloquent JavaScript is a very good read..