When do I learn the cool stuff?

You really don't. At least that's how I felt after completing the front-end track. You should consider taking the Object-Oriented JavaScript course though. I learned much more about JavaScript in that course than the front-end track. Hope this helps.

As of now I'm taking the object course that was recently added. Since I won't be learning any of that stuff that I mentioned, is it best to look online for tutorials and modify and add code to it?

I feel to be able to build sliders etc. you need a good understanding of JavaScript and this course is designed for people who have little to no programming experience, which is why you have to go through hours of videos and tutorials. However even as a more experienced JavaScript programmer looking at the basics again can be very informative as people tend to forget some of the core concepts. If you wanna write a more advanced component I agree better to skip to more advanced lessons or even make use of some external libs. If you aim is to just get a Slideshow with minimal effort I'm sure you can find some opensource libs of people who have already built them.

just take javascript fullstack. Learn foundation or bootstrap. I like bootstrap for design framework.

What about Jquery? Is that a better library to go through to find the functionality that I need? Can I add a server side with Jquery? Is it best to learn the basics before jumping on to libraries?

Thanks for the earlier responses!

I'd definitely recommend learning the basics before digging in too deep if this is all new to you, however it's entirely up to you. You can make use of external libraries even with fairly little knowledge, but you will face a whole heap of challenges along the way.

jQuery is a library written on top of JavaScript. It's basically a whole bunch of methods and makes use of a trimmed down syntax to do all sorts of DOM manipulation and yes has some cool easy to use methods to do all sorts animation etc. Quite often jQuery alone is not enough though, you might need another library such as jQuery UI which as the name tells you comes with a collection of all sorts of UI interactions and effects. (This again is built on top of jQuery and uses a similar syntax). Same thing for Bootstrap 3.0 or others.

You could do all those things in plain old JavaScript, but no-one really does that any more (time consuming).

The reason I'm saying this is because if you don't get the basics of JavaScript, you may not understand the concepts of jQuery or any other lib sitting on top (AngularJS).

Another thing to mention is that JavaScript is traditionally a frontend language. All it does is manipulate the DOM or any data (e.g. JSON data) that has been sent to the browser. However since Node.js came out there is a Server Side JavaScript implementation, however conceptually it's got little to do with the frontend JavaScript, but the good thing is that is uses the same syntax, so it will be easier to learn.

I think Team Treehouse has a Node.js course so that might help!

If you ask yourself the question: Do I need a backend system, ask yourself, does data need to be secure?

Yes: Any secure transactions and data needs to be handled in the backend, and only data that becomes visible on the site will be pushed to the frontend (as JSON data for example). E.g. User accounts, logins, etc.

No: You can just store any data in the frontend. For example in some static JSON/XML file, JavaScript or HTML. E.g. Profile, Simple Photo Gallery, Advertisement etc.

Sorry for the long text ;)

Sidney, thanks for the informative answer, it's actually opening my eyes that programming isn't as easy as I thought it ways going to be. One step at a time I see it as and little by little everyday I'm learning new basic concepts.

It seems that every time I see the videos, I learn, but when facing the challenges, I get stuck, but when I read the answer, I understand the code, but I can't figure it out by myself. Is this normal?

As for libraries, do you recommend any sites that might help. Of course I'll use them after I finish the front end track to better understand the code.

Do you recommend any other videos here on treehouse that might broaden my understanding on JavaScript, there's quite a few, but don't know which ones to pick.

Thanks!