My 3 Favorite Free Resources to Learn Javascript

When I started this blog (a whole 4 posts ago), I was focused on learning Ruby. Since then I've switched gears because the school I will be applying to focuses solely on, you guessed it, Javascript. I hope to visit Ruby again in the future, but for now I'm all bout those curly braces. Woo.

I've had some success in learning the language. Thanks to the interwebs and all the free resources I've been using, I feel pretty good about where I'm at so I wanted to share what's helped me.

1.  A Smarter Way to Learn by Mark Myers.
   This book was recommended to me by a friend and has since become the basis of all my understanding. The way Myers explains things is pretty straightforward and everything builds on itself almost perfectly. Every chapter-- only 89 --  lasts a couple of pages, 5 maybe at most and once you're done there are practice problems associated with each chapter to test your newly acquired knowledge. While the book focuses on many different concepts, it does so in pretty basic ways, but this is to ease you into the language and help you to actually understand the fundamentals.
   
   
2. Codewars
   When I first heard of Codewars I was eager to sign up. Be aware, there are two problems you have to answer right to actually become a part of the site, but once you are it's great! It works like Karate in that you start at the beginner levels denoted by higher numbers (8 kata) and work your way down (or up) to 1, at which time you can be a self-proclaimed Jedi coding wizard. You can target what you want to work on: fundamentals, algorithms, logic, loops, etc, in every level and go from there. You earn honor or "kata" for every question you answer right and it's a great way to test or refine your skills. As far as negatives go, it can be really self-defeating. Sometimes the challenges themselves aren't written correctly and so you can't get the points even though your answer is right. Other times it serves as a humble reminder that you might be a long way from where you want to be. But don't get discouraged! If you can't solve a problem and it's eating away at you (a common thing 'round these parts) forfeit the kata and read some solutions (only visible when you forfeit or answer correctly). See what others have posted and you might find that the answer was well within your reach, and you will start getting better. Remember: wax on, wax off.
   
   
3. YouTube
   My biggest struggle with learning to code on my own was a lack of resources out there after the plethora of pure beginner sources. I was having a hard time translating what I had learned into actual working programs. Step in YouTube: the world's best guidebook for any and all things. While I have had some trouble finding a video that explains the exact problem I'm working on, I have found some really helpful tutorials that lead me the right way. The user, kudvenkat, has been one of my personal favorites, but there are seriously endless amounts of people out there willing to help. Another personal fave: LearnCode.academy.

Of course this list is not exhaustive, and as such I have a few others I'd like to shout out: 

Honorable mentions: w3schools, devtools and stackoverflow.

My hope is that this helps someone else out there, but know there are so many other people and resources willing to help if this particular list doesn't work for you. Go and get on with your bad self.

Happy Friday, friends!