Just Starting to Learn JS -- Looking for Solid Online Resources!

[Ryokeen]

Hey Gang,

Recently dropped out of a two year school which was teaching us old technologies, incredibly slowly.
I figured I would be just as well off studying on my own full time, if not better off, as the two year course does NOT transfer anywhere anyway. 

Anyway, I have a mentor and a possible job opening lined up in 6 months provided I can get a grasp of JavaScript and then Elm and Elixir/Phoenix enough to be valuable to the company.

My mentor wants me to complete the Front End Curriculum at Free Code Camp as a basis, but sometimes slogging out seemingly disconnected scripts gets a little rough.

I know the program picks up with more complex challenges and such later on, but I wondered if there were other (free preferably) or cheap resources I should be using as well?
At the end of the day, I'm looking to get into the Front End dev. side of things for this company, so anything that focuses on that would be a bonus, for sure.

I'm just looking for something to bounce back to if I get burnt out on one curriculum.

Thanks!

(P.S. This is my first LTT post, don't tell the Syndicate guys I was here.__) 
 

[Bananasplit_00]

stackoverflow is probably the best thing you will ever encounter lol, if there is an error google it and stackoverflow will probably be the top result

[Sack]

Hey Gang,

Recently dropped out of a two year school which was teaching us old technologies, incredibly slowly.

I figured I would be just as well off studying on my own full time, if not better off, as the two year course does NOT transfer anywhere anyway. 

Anyway, I have a mentor and a possible job opening lined up in 6 months provided I can get a grasp of JavaScript and then Elm and Elixir/Phoenix enough to be valuable to the company.

My mentor wants me to complete the Front End Curriculum at Free Code Camp as a basis, but sometimes slogging out seemingly disconnected scripts gets a little rough.

I know the program picks up with more complex challenges and such later on, but I wondered if there were other (free preferably) or cheap resources I should be using as well?

At the end of the day, I'm looking to get into the Front End dev. side of things for this company, so anything that focuses on that would be a bonus, for sure.

I'm just looking for something to bounce back to if I get burnt out on one curriculum.

Thanks!

(P.S. This is my first LTT post, don't tell the Syndicate guys I was here.__) 

 

Lynda has you covered, and I think LTT offers you a free trial there too

[minibois]

W3Schools is what I use most of the time, but it's mostly targeted towards web use of JS.

Stackoverflow I use for most of my questions (and for all other question I use Google which usually points me to SO for programming errors or official help sites or forums for other stuff)

 

You can also take a look at the "programming resources" thread which I have linked in my signature.

[madknight3]

My mentor wants me to complete the Front End Curriculum at Free Code Camp as a basis, but sometimes slogging out seemingly disconnected scripts gets a little rough.

 

Sounds like you should just focus on getting through the FCC material, especially if your mentor has anything to do with you getting the job you mention.

 

I believe you only need to actually complete the following four sections for the Front End Dev Cert*

• Basic Front End Development Projects
• Intermediate Front End Development Projects
• Beginner Algorithm Scripting
• Intermediate Algorithm Scripting

* might want to double check I'm right

 

The above projects sections have you building websites and the above scripting sections have you solving code challenges. They are there to help you apply your knowledge. These sections can be very challenging and time consuming for some people.

 

Most of the other lessons on FCC are just there to teach you, by example, the different topics (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Bootstrap, jQuery, etc). I can understand if their style isn't your preferred way of learning these topics. I don't see why you couldn't use other resources as well. You'll certainly need to go elsewhere for the Elm/Elixir/Phoenix stuff since FCC doesn't teach them.

[Ryokeen]

Sounds like you should just focus on getting through the FCC material, especially if your mentor has anything to do with you getting the job you mention.

Yeah, I fully intend on focusing there; however, I am an auditory learner and FCC's curriculum is entirely read a short bit and then do something. I feel like things aren't solidifying for me because I'm not hearing enough about them. I'm looking to supplement my short reading and doing. I picked up Eloquent Javascript, as I also seem to benefit more from reading material that isn't snippets long. Essentially, I'm finding that FCC's teaching style is the exact opposite of how I learn. 

I'm going to breeze through the Lynda 10 day trial and do the basic JS there. 

Also going to start reading Eloquent JS.

Something about hearing then seeing helps me learn better.

Or just reading and dissecting material - lots of circles, links and notes go into my books.

The Lynda stuff is a little dated, but the basics should still apply into ECMA5 and now 6, right?

[madknight3]

... snip ...

 

Seeing as you like to hear things explained, consider Pluralsight and Treehouse on top of Lynda. They all have free trials you can take advantage of.

 

In fact when it comes to Pluralsight, you can get multiple months for free with the Visual Studio Dev Essentials program (it's for .NET programmers but it's also free so no big deal). Pluralsight also seems to have a course on Elixir.

[Ryokeen]

Seeing as you like to hear things explained, consider Pluralsight and Treehouse on top of Lynda. They all have free trials you can take advantage of.

 

In fact when it comes to Pluralsight, you can get multiple months for free with the Visual Studio Dev Essentials program (it's for .NET programmers but it's also free so no big deal). Pluralsight also seems to have a course on Elixir.

Will definitely look into Pluralsight! Seems the author of the Elixir course is the developer of the language. Will have to keep that in mind.

Thanks a ton!

[alex_read]

I've personally used codeschool.com. You can cancel a monthly subscription cost any time you've finished, there's some humour & little extra waffle/padding in the videos, there are tests after each video introduction with help/hints and all content is downloadable (slides, videos etc.). This covers the latest ECMAscript version I believe and is the only course I've needed... I'd highly recommend it.

 

I think one of the JavaScript courses was free actually too. After you've gone through the 2-3 courses on basic JavaScript & If you wanted to continue, they then have I think NodeJS, CoffeeScript etc. courses on top too, but please double-check my advice/thoughts on their site before subscribing.