Re-learning JavaScript and Start Taking It Seriously

Today is September 25 (Thursday). I started taking JavaScript Algorithms and Data Structures course from FreeCodeCamp.

The reason I re-learn it apart from gaining the certificate, it's because I feel like I never truly understand JavaScript. This has been proven when I got hands-on experience of developing a Spring Boot Framework with Thymeleaf templating engine for a gigantic and complex system applications from my previous company. The news was, our supervisor are an expert of the Java language but not so much for the front-end, so we kinda stuck on using vanilla JS and jQuery when making any interactive action in the system. That's also when I realized, I don't even know the difference between vanilla JS and jQuery. So the first time, the code was so jumbled up where sometimes the function use vanilla JS, sometimes use jQuery, and then it acted unexpectedly. All I do was, wing it. Fake it till you make it as people say. I vibe code 80% of the time. So I realized, I never fully understand JavaScript.

Now that I have all the time in the world, I want to properly learn JavaScript from printing text to console to complex DOM manipulation.

I started at 5 in the morning. As of the time I'm writing this, I've completing the progress until Step 36 of the Calorie Counter application. Although the journey is still long, it really humbles me. One of the key moments of why I think this is not a waste of time is I got to:

1. Fully understand push(), pop(), shift() and unshift()
2. Understanding the syntax
3. Improving my knowledge for for() and while() loop
4. Learning how to draw a pattern with mathematic expression
5. Learning about regex that I have never learned

...and so much more.

I really hope I will finish this course. But I'm still afraid that I forget most of the things I've learned today because I cannot wait to finish it and building projects. I will update again when I've finally finished.