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General Discussion

Posted by kj2
kj2
5,933 Points

Real World Applications

Im doing the front end dev track, Im on the Javascript part, doing Arrays right now, Im learning a ton, and understanding fairly a good amount, however, I feel like Im learning definitions and what specific pieces of code does and learning the language, but Im not realizing how to use any of it in actually code, when it comes to the javascript part. I wish the videos would say " this is how you would use this in a real world project"

any advice on how to best start putting my very basic understanding of javascript to use?

thanks

2 Answers

Craig Schlegel
Craig Schlegel
12,268 Points
Craig Schlegel
Craig Schlegel
12,268 Points

It seems like using arrays and classes and those kinds of things are better suited for web applications (or console based applications). The php track on treehouse has you using these things to make an online product catalog. From what I understand (I'm a beginner too), javascript is used more for adding basic interactivity to your site with things like jquery.

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points

From what I understand (I'm a beginner too), javascript is used more for adding basic interactivity to your site with things like jquery.

While that is the most common use case JavaScript can do a lot more. You can read about some of these use cases over on the Treehouse blog http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/learn-javascript

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points
James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points

The way most people learn their first programming language is they are taught about the tools of the trade, variables, loops, arrays, data storage etc.

Once you know how to do all of that then you need a problem to solve and the most important part of the learning process begins ...

  • you break your problem into (very) small steps
  • order your steps
  • pick the next step off the list
  • look in your toolbox to see what tool you need to help you complete the step

Here's a good problem to illustrate the point ...

Say you run a database query that returns a list of dates and number of badges earned on that date.

You want to calculate how many consecutive days Treehouse user has earned a badge, you want to calculate their learning streak.

A few choice tools for this problem would be ...

  • an array (to store the date and badges earned on that day)
  • a loop (to loop over the array)
  • a few variables (to keep track of which date you are on and number of consecutive days)

In programming there are often many ways to do something, you can do this in JavaScript or in a backend language like PHP.