How To Learn JavaScript
January 14, 2019
In today’s day and age, coding is becoming more popular than ever. It’s not uncommon for people to quit their jobs, learn coding, and get a front-end development position as a second career.
Front-end development is such an attractive career for many reasons: high-demand, large salaries, and anyone can learn how to code for free (or a small amount of money) on the Internet.
Perhaps the largest facet of learning front-end development is having solid JavaScript skills. The majority of front-end development job interviews involve heavy JavaScript coding as well as deep understanding of the underlying concepts.
But learning JavaScript can be daunting with so many resources to choose from. So I have compiled a list of the top places that helped me learn JavaScript.
If you’re completely new to front-end development, check out the Front-end Developer Handbook. This is a great introduction to front-end development with high-level explanations of the related technologies.
Online Courses
The best way to learn JavaScript is by practicing, thus online courses provide a great learning environment that requires you to complete activities and projects.
Many websites will have free options for their courses, but for $40 or less (usually) you can upgrade to the professional tier and unlock more content.
Some websites, such as Lynda, even offer integration with your LinkedIn profile so you can display your course achievements on your resume.
This is a great way to stand out to technical recruiters.
Lynda ($30/month)
Front-end Masters ($39/month)
Pluralsight ($29/month)
General Assembly ($ varies by course)
Treehouse ($25/month)
Coursera ($ varies by course)
Egghead.io ($40/month — pro)
CodeAcademy ($ varies by course)
Email Subscriptions
An easy way to stay up-to-date on the latest and greatest features in JavaScript is to sign up for weekly email subscriptions. They show up in your inbox without you having to think about it.
Books
Personally, I love reading technical books. You can find most of the books you’ll need for free online. For beginners, I recommend starting with the JavaScript and jQuery book below, although I wouldn’t recommend relying too heavily on jQuery as it’s a bit dated and most employers find this to be a deterrent.
Professional JavaScript for Web Developers ($13 — $27)
JavaScript & jQuery ($22)
Websites & Blogs
Mozilla Developer Network is one of the best resources for looking up the answers to your most burning JavaScript questions. I highly recommend reading through their documentation. CSS Tricks is also an awesome website for staying up-to-date on JavaScript.
Tools
Below are some great tools for quickly testing JavaScript (and related frameworks). They require no overhead to set up and are wonderful tools to use when following along to a course.
Frameworks & Libraries
I highly recommend learning all the ins-and-outs of JavaScript (vanilla JS) before getting to know a framework or library. Too often, developers jump in to learning React or Vue and don’t understand what’s going on under-the-hood, so these should be seen more as a second step in your JavaScript journey.
IDEs
To make your JavaScript journey enjoyable, it’s important to choose an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that you enjoy. I personally love VSCode, but below are some other awesome IDEs.
Web Storm ($)
Top Influencers
A great, and easy, way to learn JS is to follow awesome influencers, or experts in the field. Below are some of the people I enjoy learning from.
Front-end Development Interview Help
Once you’re ready to jump into an interview, the sites below can help you practice your coding skills. These are primarily algorithm-based, so make sure you’re familiar with common sorting and searching algorithms.
Conferences & Meetups
Lastly, I highly recommend attending meetups and conferences as often as you can. Conferences can get expensive, however, so meetups can be a great way to meet other JS lovers in your city.
The most important thing to remember when beginning your journey to becoming a JS developer is not to get discouraged and compare yourself to others. It takes years of practice and real-world experience to become an expert (as it does in any field). And if you’re seriously stuck, head over to Stack Overflow for help.
You will have tons of technical interviews without job offers, and that’s okay. But by learning JavaScript inside-and-out, you will be in an awesome position to score a kick-ass front-end developer job.
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