The Road to Becoming a Javascript Ninja Week: 1

So I made it through my first week on my journey to becoming a Javascript ninja. Each time I say Javascript ninja it seems way cooler than it actually is. Basically all I've been doing is reading a textbook on Javascript and writing some code. When I first decided to learn Javascript I was going in with the mindset that I was going to give it the "college try", mainly out of fear that it was going to be even tougher than I had imagined. Well, I am here to tell you that, while it's still early, learning Javascript hasn't been nearly as bad as I had imagined it would be.

The best Javascript book of all time

Ok, so I can't say whether or not JavaScript and JQuery: Interactive Front-End Web Development by Jon Duckett is the best Javascript book of all time (Because I haven't read them all, or any for that matter), but I can say it has to be towards the top of such a list. This book is literally the most beautiful book I have ever laid my eyes on. From the well taken photos to the fonts and layout of the pages, this book is nothing short of a work of art.

With the book being so eye pleasing, you forget that you are reading a technical piece of writing. I can't explain how nice it is to not feel like you are reading a boring textbook. The code examples and comments on them make it so easy to follow that I often didn't even have to refer to it on my computer to understand how it worked. The way the code examples tie together a combination of what you learned throughout the chapter make it really easy to not only learn, but to get a better understanding of how the different parts of the code work together. Great job, Jon Duckett!

What I've Learned

So, the first couple of chapters was nothing new. For most web designers that have ever worked on a theme that used jQuery, you will already have a basic understanding of Javascript to begin with. I will say it was nice to properly learn the basics though. Things like syntax, variables, arrays and other basics are covered and then functions, methods, and objects. There is no sense in boring you with details so I will show an example using some of the things I have learned so far.

See the Pen Javascript Background Changer by Nick Santini (@npsantini) on CodePen.

This took me a while to make because I kept messing up the syntax. It's especially frustrating when something like a missing semi-colon or an out of place curly bracket doesn't allow your script to run properly even though you are so close.

Now that I have a better idea of what lies ahead I can say with at least some certainty that it will be easier than I thought, but a little more frustrating than I imaged. Either way, it will definitely get interesting in the next couple of weeks.