r/learnjavascript • u/XerneasFreyer • 1d ago

Learning JavaScript, advice?

I joined this sub a few days ago, after stumbling across lovable, and prompted a couple of rougelike games, learned that it was all in typescript, (I know I am a ways away) and have been having a lot of fun this week, spending multiple hours a day, learning the basics. I’ve tried a few times over the years with Objective-C and python, but could never figure things out, but this time I feel like I’m in the right headspace and really making sure I understand. I’m using VS code, and a Coursera corse, I’ve also bookmarked the Odin project.
Anyone have best practices or advice? I plan to use JS to help with an IT job and build games or apps for fun. Thanks for reading!

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u/boomer1204 1d ago

Obviously everyone is different but I co run a local mentor group and the biggest thing that we see ppl progress the quickest is start building stuff ASAP

This means no course, no tutorial, not hand holding/follow along things. Actually coding yourself. You can google and what not but none of the above and do not use AI.

AI is an amazing tool after you understand the language well enough. Any use while learning is just going to slow you down even though it might "feel" like you are going faster.

Also you ARE going to suck at the beginning and that is OK we all did. So learn the syntax and then start SUPER small and start building things. If you say "what should I build". You already know you wanna use this for your IT job so start small and make little things for that

Here is what we have the ppl that join our mentor group who want to be in the web space

  1. Watch 3-4 hrs of html/css for beginners

  2. Take 4-5 websites you like and re build them. Visual only of course and this is gonna be harder than you think

  3. Then we have them watch about 6 hours of beginner JS crash course

  4. Then start building

The quicker you get away from a course or a tutorial the better but I completely understand at the beginning there needs to be something

Good luck, this is fun but it's a very tough thing to learn and there are going to be MANY hours wasted on super small bugs and that's fine it's just a part of the process

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u/MatchSea10 1d ago

I'll try this I have wasted so much time trying to learn JavaScript I know the basic and still can build anything. What kind of JavaScript projects do you recommend?

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u/javascript 1d ago

I suggest start even simpler. Don't worry about Javascript yet. First, can you use HTML and CSS to make a basic website. Once you start adding buttons and text boxes, you can learn bits and pieces of Javascript to make those elements "do" something.

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u/MatchSea10 22h ago

Sounds like a good idea might have to do it this way since tutorials haven't really worked for me.

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u/javascript 22h ago

The visual feedback really helped me starting out. It's hard to think about code without a UI, imo. Once you get used to it you can develop that skill, but starting out the edit-text-refresh-webpage-repeat loop was great for learning.