Learning JavaScript

[HomeBot 0]

Hey guys, I wanted to learn to code in my free time during college and wanted to start with JavaScript because I've had some previous experience with Adsense sites and wanted to go down that route in the future. Would JavaScript be a good place to start for someone with no previous experience in coding? I've started up on Codecademy free lessons but if anyone has any advice on some other resources that might be better let me know!

[Hans420 83]

JavaScript is a great choice but you should be familiar with HTML/CSS before you go down that road.

[Sartux 9]

Yeah its a good language to start with. Its a bit more complicated than python but easier to do web/gui stuff with. Everyone always gets frustrated with python if they want to do anything 'visual' whereas JS has it all built in.

 

One thing to be careful of is that javascript is very unforgiving compared to python. If you make a mistake it wont necessarily tell you where you went wrong or things will just suddenly stop working but not throw up any errors. All that means is you have to really learn the language rather than just do trial and error.

 

There are good resources all over - the w3schools stuff is probably the best as it has loads of examples and is well written.

[Hans420 83]

Yeah its a good language to start with. Its a bit more complicated than python but easier to do web/gui stuff with. Everyone always gets frustrated with python if they want to do anything 'visual' whereas JS has it all built in.

 

One thing to be careful of is that javascript is very unforgiving compared to python. If you make a mistake it wont necessarily tell you where you went wrong or things will just suddenly stop working but not throw up any errors. All that means is you have to really learn the language rather than just do trial and error.

 

There are good resources all over - the w3schools stuff is probably the best as it has loads of examples and is well written.

 

That's not necessarily true. Try and catch will output any errors with syntax, etc. Chrome's developer console does a pretty good job at pin pointing errors. Issues with a variable or function? Use console.log() to track progress.

[Sartux 9]

Yeah its a good language to start with. Its a bit more complicated than python but easier to do web/gui stuff with. Everyone always gets frustrated with python if they want to do anything 'visual' whereas JS has it all built in.

 

One thing to be careful of is that javascript is very unforgiving compared to python. If you make a mistake it wont necessarily tell you where you went wrong or things will just suddenly stop working but not throw up any errors. All that means is you have to really learn the language rather than just do trial and error.

 

There are good resources all over - the w3schools stuff is probably the best as it has loads of examples and is well written.

 

That's not necessarily true. Try and catch will output any errors with syntax, etc. Chrome's developer console does a pretty good job at pin pointing errors. Issues with a variable or function? Use console.log() to track progress.

 

It's not terrible (especially compared to something like C/assembly) but it's not as friendly as python imo - mostly because python does all the things you've mentioned without the programmer having to do anything. On top of that, you're also working concurrently with four systems that can mess up (HTML/CSS/JS/Database) and it can be difficult to pinpoint what's gone wrong - especially starting out on your first big project.

 

JS certainly isn't a bad choice, and I'd recommend people who want to go into visual programming to start with it, but just to be aware that its a bit less forgiving than python which is just 'go here and change this'