(Note: This is neither a sponsor nor a promotion. I just want to share my experience with Scrimba!)
Recently, I took the 'Learn JavaScript for free' course offered by Scrimba. In addition to JavaScript, I learned many more things which I did not understand before. It was a game changing course for me!
A little bit of background about myself, I am currently a Software Engineer working in a non-coding domain and trying to catch up with coding after 3 years of my graduation in a CS degree. I always had an interest to build web apps/websites so I started learning JavaScript in April this year. Little did I know how much this world has changed and I got stuck in a tutorial hell! I loved reading/learning about the concepts but when it came to build something as simple as a todo app, I lacked. Around august this year, I somehow stumbled onto scrimba website and my journey has been so comfortable and beautiful since!
Of course, we can talk about how amazing scrimba is but let me start with What I was struggling with and connect the dots.
Syntax
I did not have a problem with syntax, only while running through the concepts. But, when I attempted to bring in a target element with getElementById(), I went blank.
This is the first and foremost thing I learned, build your muscle memory! Yes, like typing, reflexively reacting to danger or talking your mother tongue. Building it in yourself is important. We are asked to try the lesson first and Per (instructor) makes us write the same basic piece of code a lot of times for us to get comfortable with the language.
I can now code beginner projects without feeling anxious because the foundations are engraved in my brain.
Attempting to Build
Oh my god! The word 'build' terrified me a lot from the time I started learning JavaScript. Because I was not aware what topics to choose?, what to use?, how to proceed? etc.
In Scrimba, we get experience on building projects from the beginning. In this course, Per built three projects with us while teaching the concepts and asked us to build three. It was so well set that the first solo project had similar concepts which we learned in the previous lessons! I built all six and hosted it on Github, too! We are encouraged to go beyond and try additional features as well!
This helped me with my fear to build something because I always thought 'building' was something complicated and overwhelming.
Finding the 'Why'
I always wanted to learn coding but I did not know WHY, even now I am in the process of finding that 'why' but the projects we did in here had a very clear 'why' attached to it!
For example, we built a chrome extension which could help sales people to get the leads (for selling the product or anything relevant). The process was simple and I was so excited because it was a CHROME EXTENSION! I use pomodoro timer and html tree generator extensions everyday and this was such a cool thing to build!
Beginners like us are so busy with all the learning that we forget to give time to think why we are actually doing it? I will find my why one day, so try to find yours, too!
Learning something New
Learning something new out of anything you read/discover is always thrilling! I learned a few things when I was doing this course, and you might like some, too!
To get the content of input tag, use '.value' instead of '.textContent' because it doesn't have a closing tag.
DOM Manipulation always has a Cost.
'Take your arguments outside!' - Arguments are always outside the function definition and parameters are always inside.
Per has a great sense of humour! :P
To conclude, it was a great and amazing experience as it helped me build my knowledge and also my confidence to code!
P.S. This is my first blog so please feel free to comment down if I lack somewhere! I would be very happy to fix it the next time!
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