I’m working though the JavaScript section right now and I’m finding several lessons that, in reality, are very simple, however they become confusing because of how simple they are.
Some notable examples are Stand in Line and Use Conditional Logic with If Statements. I feel the common denominator between these two is that I get hung up on the default names of certain functions, arrays, and variables within the lesson that I loose the meaning of what I’m supposed to learn.
For instance, on the conditional logic lesson, I was supposed to plug in “wasThatTrue” into the parenthesis beside the if statement. This was just copying the conditional from above it, not really creating a usable if statement. I figured it was just to show you how the basics of if statements work. I sat trying to put strings in the if statements but unable to pass the lesson until I looked at a hint and saw how simplistic the answer was.
Has this happened to anyone else?
Yes, it happened to me in some lessons I can’t really recall right now. I did those lessons you posted some time ago, and I think their main objective is for you to get familiar with the syntax. I just tried them right now and everything was clear in my opinion.
I get what you mean, even if I find it difficult to put it into words, but my humble suggestion is to not get too worried about the specifics right now. I’m pretty sure that if you try some of those lessons you found confusing in a couple of weeks you will breeze through them.
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Yeah, with a lot of this kind of thing, anything I come across that is confusing, I have to believe that it will click eventually. Sometimes that’s easier said than done.
On the one hand, I would like to say “it gets easier when you’re dealing with objects or classes you’ve created, with variables you’ve defined…” but I’m too busy laughing at myself.
There is a very good reason I keep referring back to MDN. I might forget to camelCase a method name, or I might misspell something inane. It happens.
There is no MDN for legacy code. You get into a job situation, and you’re inheriting a code base you had nothing to do with. So object names that you might hate, or properties that mean nothing. Personally, when I’ve been in that situation, I write myself a Bible – I’ll rip objects or classes apart, and construct my own personal reference for it. Hate when cute developers deliberately obfuscate or minify development code.
And for your own code, there is no MDN either. When you build a class, you will have to remember or refer back to determine what you used for that particular method when you were writing it at two in the morning after a mad binge of sour warheadz and jolt cola. Best of luck. It gets weird.
So yeah, it isn’t just the lessons. But in this particular case, it’s small, and it’s about understanding context. They give you a function they want, and a function “signature” (what it takes as parameters, and what it should return). How you make that happen is up to you.
Keep it basic, watch the inputs and outputs (parameters and return values), and in most cases, you’ll be all right.
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