Re-learning JavaScript and Start Taking It Seriously

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

The reason I decided to re-learn it, aside from wanting to earn the certificate, is because I feel like I never truly understood JavaScript. This became clear when I gained hands-on experience developing a Spring Boot framework with the Thymeleaf templating engine for a large and complex system at my previous company.

The thing was, our supervisor was an expert in Java but not so much in front-end development, so we were stuck using vanilla JavaScript and jQuery to handle interactive features in the system. That was also when I realized I did not even know the difference between vanilla JS and jQuery. At first, the code was a complete mess since some functions used vanilla JS while others used jQuery, and it often behaved unpredictably. All I did was wing it. As people say, “fake it till you make it.” I was basically vibing my code 80 percent of the time. That was when it hit me that I never really understood JavaScript.

Now that I finally have the time, I want to properly learn JavaScript, from printing text to the console to performing complex DOM manipulations.

I started at 5 a.m. Today, as I am writing this, I have reached Step 36 of the Calorie Counter application. The journey is still long, but it has been humbling. One of the key reasons I feel this is not a waste of time is that I have already:

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. Still, I am a bit worried that I might forget some of the things I learned today because I am so eager to move on to building projects. I will update again once I finally complete it.