The importance of frameworks
Today, JavaScript won. After completing the 2 Pillars section of Andrei Neagoie's "Advanced JavaScript Concepts," I'm thoroughly lost. I've learned a lot, but there's a lot that just went right over my head. It's clear that JavaScript is something that takes years to fully understand, not something you can casually pick up and master in weeks. I think this is why it's so captivating to me. I grew up playing golf, one of the most difficult games to learn, with a steep learning curve that takes years to flatten out. When I first started learning how to play golf, it would frustrate the hell out of me that I couldn't make the ball do what I want it to, try as I might. I realized at some point the only way forward was practice and learning the fundamentals inside and out. I did this, and there were only incremental payoffs, not immediate mastery. I'm 22 years into my golfing career, and mastery is still far from attainable. Even the greatest players that ever lived never achieved mastery. JavaScript doesn't go quite to these lengths, but is a mini-model of this. At the end of the day, the only way to get better is to practice and study the fundamentals. Eventually, the learning curve flattens out, but the road never ends.
As I stated, the section on the 2 pillars of JavaScript was really difficult. The 2 pillars are closures and prototypal inheritance; when explained, they seemed simple enough, but when it came time to do the exercises, I realized I had no idea what I was doing. These concepts are integral to JavaScript and moving forward with the rest of the lessons, so I hope after more instruction, they'll come easier for me. I've been recommended by 2 different sources now to take a course called "JavaScript: Understanding the Weird Parts," so I may have to take a detour before starting my Frontend Masters journey to take this course. I don't think this course is particularly long, but I've heard it explains some difficult topics in a nice way, so hopefully this can help with the hard stuff.
I have the next 2 days off work, so I'm hoping to get some work done, finish this course and move back to Neil Cummings' "Build an app with React, Redux, and Firestore from scratch. I haven't had the chance to actually do much coding in this course, and I'm itching to get back to vsCode and write some lines. In that course, I'm altering the final project to a unique app and would love to have this in working order so I can add it as a cornerstone to my portfolio. Speaking of my portfolio, at some point in the near future, I may scrap my original portfolio and create something a little bit better. I have a few more tricks up my sleeve than I used to, and I think in a few weeks time, I could create something awesome.
Until tomorrow!
