Front end development track a little too JavaScript heavy?

Javascript is a programming language. It's also (IMO) one of the hardest languages to learn. It's a radical departure from the the structural and presentation languages of HTML and CSS. For a well rounded developer, having at least a core understanding of Javascript is important, so all I can do is encourage you to keep at it. Web development should be programming based, and web design more visual and structural based.

If it makes you feel any better I have been a professional web designer/developer/whatever you want to call it these days for 3 years and I still struggle with some JavaScript code. I found it very difficult to grasp and I have read the same, very good JavaScript book about 4 or 5 times now.

I find JavaScript is something I need to do regularly or I forget how to do a lot of it. My suggestion is keep at it though, keep learning and most of all, keep coding and trying to solve real life problems, make your own slider, make a to-do list, create quizzes etc, the only way (imo) to learn JavaScript is to continually practice it.

The way things are going with the web at the moment I am not sure there will be too many front-end jobs kicking around so the more you learn programming languages the better chance you'll have of a career in the industry.

Good luck.

The learning curve goes both ways! I'm coming into web-development backwards, I learned JavaScript to write scripts for google apps and got comfortable with it. Naturally, I like the JS heavy web-dev track, but the looming monster is the web design one. Html/css is the weird frontier to me.

Language-learning might just be a thing you can't learn gradually, whether it's programming or spoken. The best learners seem to be the ones who don't worry about sounding like fools and just do it, and do it a lot. They get all the essential mistakes out of the way.

I think one of the hardest things in the industry for people just entering (I'm re-entering and a lot has changed) is the idea that Front-End Web Development is easier than Back-End. The track is laid out nicely, but your first steps with JavaScript are bound to be a bit iffy. Just know that I've been programming for years and came to Treehouse to fill holes in my knowledge. We all have weak spots.

The good news is there are so many options for working with JavaScript that make things much easier (like jQuery), and usually that's all people expect you to know. But learn a bit of the foundations first. I don't think JavaScript is harder, but going from HTML and CSS straight to that is a bit jarring, but that's the workflow of the job of the front-end developer. I was actually excited to find that Treehouse had tracks laid out like this. It's very real-world.

That said! If you haven't started a little project in HTML and CSS on your own to start testing your knowledge, take a break from the JavaScript and come back to it. When you do, you'll understand why it's important and when you'll need it. You don't have to leave a track to take a break from it and work on other things. There's a lot of awesome CSS stuff on here that I keep bookmarking.

Anyway... I hope that helps. Just keep it up! You don't even need as much JavaScript these days, and, in the beginning, most of the stuff clients request is already written. You just have to be able to understand it. Make a few small programs that do simple things as you learn, and you'll be on your way. :)

so is there a shortage in front-end developer jobs? I thought the opposite..was the case as well....