Quick Story:
I went through the ‘Basic JavaScript’ section with ease, mostly because I learned Python before (Basics of Python, nothing too crazy, just went through Zed Shaw’s book) so I saw some similarities. There were some sections of the basics where I struggled, but the videos helped a lot.
Fast forward to the past week. Going through ES6, Regular Expressions, etc., I have struggled to pick up anything and most of the stuff has gone over my head. If we’re being honest, I don’t even really remember most of the stuff that was covered in those sections. The videos in the Basic JavaScript section helped when I was at a roadbump, but I saw that there weren’t any videos for the other sections. Another struggle is that the hints and examples don’t really help. I know when I’m looking at the solutions, several of the solutions use techniques and code that weren’t even covered in prior sections. It also seems like FreeCodecamp doesn’t really give any examples of how to tie in JavaScript with HTML/CSS code until we get to the front end technologies.
Any suggestions? I would have loved to apply to some jobs by now, but with the confusingness of the current topics being taught, I can’t even script any simple JavaScript projects.
Yeah, that is completely normal. But, some thoughts.
First of all, at some point we’re going to have to stop calling it “ES6” and just call its JavaScript - I mean, ES6 was a big one, but we’re already up to ES11. But the cool thing about the ES6 topics is that they can be broken down into small chunks - arrow functions, template literals, spread operators (OK, technically ES9), etc. Just pick one a week and watch some videos on it and do some tutorials. And really, a lot of those features aren’t in common usage - you can just wait and see which ones come up. Sure, some of them look odd, but everything looks odd when you first see it. Just work with them and they will become familiar. When I first saw an arrow function, I thought it was confusing and stupid. Now I use them almost exclusively.
As to RegEx, yeah, that is tough. I use it but I often have to look it up or work out the details in a RegEx playground. RegEx is arcane and frustrating, but it is also extremely powerful. It’s also common in (afaik) all modern programming languages, even Python.
But ultimately, don’t worry if you can’t remember everything - no one can. Google is your best friend. Several times a day I have to refer to google or Stack Overflow or MDN. It’s just a part of the job. It’s more important to know what is possible and know where to look it up.
It also seems like FreeCodecamp doesn’t really give any examples of how to tie in JavaScript with HTML/CSS code until we get to the front end technologies.
Yeah, that is a common complaint. FCC likes to break things down into short little lessons with as little text as possible. And this is a subject that I don’t think it lends itself to that. If I search on youtube for “build a web page from scratch” I see a lot of entries. I might suggest picking a simple game tutorial - they are certain to have some JS.