Codecademy- ‘Learn JavaScript’
My first step into learning JavaScript was starting to read the book Eloquent Javascript. I love the book and can already tell it’s going to be a huge asset as I continue to learn the language and computer programming in general.
The only problem is after a while of reading it, I was getting anxious to start coding. I probably could have just started doing the exercises in the book, but I wanted to try something else. This lead me to Codecademy.
I remember starting this course once before, several years ago, but got sidetracked with work and life in general (now I have MxPx stuck in my head). Once I dedicated time each day to work on it, it felt like I breezed through it. I didn’t keep track, but I probably completed it in 4–7 hours spaced over a week.
The syllabus for the course covers the basics and gives you the building blocks for JavaScript. This was a much different approach to how I learned HTML and CSS, which is I looked at and edited source code over many years and slowly learned what everything did as I needed to. While that way is more organic and helped me understand HTML and CSS very well, I’m trying something new this time around.
Each lesson is designed to give you the tools you need to complete the exercise, but not completely hold your hand. If you get stuck, you can opt to get a hint. If you are still stuck after several tries of writing the code, they also give you the option to autocomplete the problem so you can see how it was supposed to look and you can move on to the next exercise.
The course text editor looks like most text editors on the market today. It’s what you use for the entire course to work on the problems. I loved and hated it.
Things I loved:
* The colors make the code easy to read
* It doesn’t autocomplete or give suggestions when typing
* It shows the results of the script when you click ‘Run’
Things I hated:
* It automatically makes double brackets, parentheses, and quotes
* It gives error notices within the code while you are still typing
Overall, I enjoyed the course. It was very easy to follow and is great if you’re a hands-on learner like me. The lessons are broken up into mini projects which aren’t overwhelming. It’s slightly gamified so it feels good to complete each section.
I love that free resources like this exist now. If something like Codecademy would have been available 20 years ago when I was in high school, it would have literally changed my life.
I have to keep reminding myself “it’s never to late to be what you might have been.”
