JavaScript understanding

This is perfectly normal, I was in exactly the same position 6 months ago however when you start using JavaScript in actual projects everything slowly starts to become much more clear. When I first learn't the language I really struggled because with Treehouse I feel like you learn about Variables, Arrays, Objects etc before you actually use them in a project to build something actually useful, for this reason it's really easy to forget why we use certain methods.

My advice is go out there and try and develop something on the front end at first such as a little bit of interactivity to your portfolio site if you have one. Try and make little JavaScript plugins such as a LightBox. To learn JavaScript or any other language I feel like you actually need to get out there and develop something and learn from your mistakes.

As I said I was in exactly the same position, I felt like I had spent so much time learning JavaScript but did not know how to put my knowledge to action, so I slowly started adding a few interactive front end scripts to my personal site and that is when I actually started to use the language commercially.

I was always worried about sticking to best practises whilst coding and barely got anything done because of this, looking back at some of my code I feel ashamed by how bad it was however over time you learn how to make your code as DRY as possible.

As I keep saying just go out there and try to build something, the first thing you build might suck but you will always improve in the future.

Thank you for your responses.

I am really relieved to know this is normal. I feel like I am spending so much time watching the videos and trying to remember everything that I don’t really get round to doing any JavaScript myself, unless it’s a code challenge.

I suppose I find it hard to actually think of something to do with JavaScript. May I ask people what you started with? I think it would really help give me structure/direction!

Hi Keiran,

No problem. My first project was to create a HTML + JS mobile application using an API to monitor servers.

Basically, I started by creating the HTML pages, and then attempted to figure out how to populate each page using JS. Once I had a jumble of infomation writing to the page, I worked on figuring out how to get the exact information I was after from each request I made to the API. You realise very quickly that you know more than you thought you did and after a little time playing around, it all starts to fall in to place.

What have you tried to do so far?

Try doing some exercises in Eloquent JavaScript. They're challenging, but not impossible, and it'll help teach you how to culminate all of the individual concepts you've learned.