Chipping away at it

Slowly but surely, this JavaScript thing is starting to stick. It's almost unnoticeable sometimes, the progress I've made. If you had asked me to write some sort of basic function a month ago, I would have frozen on the spot, not even knowing where to start. I think the one piece that's impacted my progress more than anything else was Will Sentance's "JavaScript: The Hard Parts." When you watch his course, he explains very complex topics in a way that makes them seem very simple and straightforward. Not to mention, I thoroughly enjoy watching him teach; he is seriously funny and takes a great attitude to the approach. Along the way, he asks the class to pair up to do pair programming sessions. Since I'm on my own while watching his courses, this isn't necessarily possible. He does, however, share the problem set so the viewer at home can attempt the same exercises. When I first took this course, I struggled to get very far with the problem sets, but I was able to definitely break through and create some functions of my own.

Now, I've decided to take his course on Frontend Masters, "Hard Parts: Functional JS Foundations," which is an updated version of one of the halves of the aforementioned course by him. When I got to the first set of problems, they were surprisingly a breeze. This made me realize how far I've come in a short period of time. It gave me hope that I can actually learn this dreaded language, and that I have made a lot more progress than I had previously given myself credit for. I've encountered some exercises on multiple platforms that completely zap your confidence in their level of difficulty. I'm just not ready for these problems yet; I still have work to do on my foundation. It's not that I can't learn it, but more that I'm not yet there in my journey. I will get to a point where these exercises too seem simple and easily attainable, but I have to show some patience, once again.

Speaking of incredibly difficult exercises, I've decided to test my hand on CodeWars with limited success. I was able to solve 2 exercises today, and it gave me a huge adrenaline rush when all of the tests passed. Then, I got to the third and realized I once again had no idea what I was doing. But, with my new found perspective, I'm not going to let that get me down. I will come back to this question and others when I have a better understanding of the language in general. Broadly speaking, CodeWars is a great way to learn, and I'm certainly not abandoning the platform in the least. In fact, when I've rested a bit and gained some more knowledge from Will's course, I plan on attempting another exercise on CodeWars. After giving it my full attention and effort, if I'm still not able to solve it, I'll leave it for another day. The bottom line is that JavaScript takes time to learn; there's a lot to learn and it's not easy. If it were easy, it wouldn't be nearly as rewarding to learn and progress.

Until tomorrow!