I thought I knew JavaScript.

I had studied:

• arrays and objects
• loops and conditionals
• destructuring
• string methods
• even map, filter, reduce

But every time I opened a “simple” problem, my brain froze.

Not because of syntax.

Because I didn’t know how to think.

The mistake I kept making

I was asking:

“What code should I write?”

Instead of:

• What is the input?
• What shape should the output have?
• Am I counting, grouping, or transforming data?
• Should the result be {} or []?

That single question — {} or [] — blocked me more times than syntax errors ever did.

The moment things clicked

I stopped rushing to write code.

Before touching the keyboard, I started writing this in plain English:

• “I need to group items by X”
• “I need to count how many times Y appears”
• “I need one value per key”

Only then did loops, accumulators, and dynamic keys make sense.
_What was the moment JavaScript finally “clicked” for you?
_

js
const result = {};

for (const item of data) {
  const key = item.type;
  result[key] = (result[key] ?? 0) + 1;
}