How I learned JavaScript.
Tags: webdev, node, nuxt, javascript
Published: 2023-01-22 12:01:34

Well, Hi fellow JS lovers. I don't even know why I chose this to be my first tech blog, but I guess JavaScript had to have a part in it for the impact it has had on my career at large.

Before giving you my poison, here is the freeCodeCamp definition of JavaScript. JavaScript is a dynamic programming language that's used for web development, in web applications, for game development, and lots more. It allows you to implement dynamic features on web pages that cannot be done with only HTML and CSS.

In my own terms, JavaScript is a lightweight scripting language that is mainly used for web scripting to bring in dynamism and interactivity to web pages. This means that JavaScript is the language that allow us to give instructions to web pages for them to stop being static and be fun in some way.


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/83fkhme91rrhofder5jd.jpg)

You're probably wondering why I added a random image of Pep Guardiola, the famous Spanish football coach. What does he do?, he gives instructions to his team to play in a certain way and bring dynamism to how his team plays, and he wins matches doing that. Hope you guessed why I brought that up, so let's get into my own story.

My first encounter with JavaScript is probably the first day I tried out creating a web page. From a basic login button to a hello world browser alert after clicking a button on my page, JavaScript was involved.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/c9kmjx5x5drurhw0ksmk.jpg)

The guy above is Cristiano Ronaldo one of the football greats, nope I'm just kidding he is an amateur football player who probably knows how to kick a ball, but can he do a Marseille roulette, the rabona or the panenka?. Probably not, but him and Ronaldo are both football players, but with different levels of skills.

So to cut the story short I was a JavaScript amateur programmer who could script a button to produce an alert but could I write more complex JavaScript code to solve real world problems?. The answer is no, and below I take you through my journey to become an expert(I don't even think I'm close to being an expert, lol).

I went through a period of tutorial hell, just to try to get a grasp of JavaScript fundamentals. I watched a bunch of YouTube videos and read blogs just like this one, lol.

So how did I strike gold in terms of the proper learning curve?. It wasn't magic at all, but I just took advice from my senior to take a freeCodeCamp certification in JavaScript Algorithms and Data Structures, and it has been an upward curve ever since.

The certification takes upwards of 300 hours of coursework ranging from basic JavaScript data types to more complex topics such as Regular Expressions, Recursion and Higher order functions. The courses are arranged in such a way that you could move from a beginner to an expert without using any other resource outside that certification program.

I think it is very necessary for a learning tool to be highly interactive, visually simple with good aesthetics and freeCodeCamp offers just that and of course it is free. I know you wanted to hear that.

After acquiring my JavaScript certification, I started to put the fundamentals into practise and also added a few other resources to gain an extra edge in my development process and I will share them in my next blog.

That being said, if you are already an expert or beginner also, I would like to know how you fellow JS lovers got to gain expertise in JavaScript, Cheers.