JavaScript Wrap-Up

The semester is almost over, friends, and that means this JavaScript adventure is ending, for now. At the beginning, I was pretty intimidated by this language blog project. The idea that I would be able to teach myself enough about JavaScript to write a whole program seemed daunting, but I'm really happy with the amount of knowledge that I was able to gain in a short period of time.

What really helped me get through this was learning to rely on the JavaScript documentation over a Google or Stack Overflow search. Don't get me wrong, those are great resources, but you can fall down a pretty big rabbit hole chasing an answer that could easily be resolved by going to the source. Unless you find an exact duplicate solution to the function you are trying to write, you could end up wasting more time trying to adapt someone else's code than just writing your own.

Also, there are so many opinions on the best code to solve a problem that I found it better to search the API and come up with my own solution. It allowed me to see how different JS methods work, or don't work, depending on the case. I know a lot of us rely on examples to learn coding, and that's a solid way to introduce concepts, but I think my coding improved overall by trying to write functions on my own without a template to follow.

On that note, another benefit of learning JS is that it improved my Java coding as well. Learning more about concepts that also exist in Java, like scope, recursion, switch, break, continue, etc. aided me in gaining a better understanding of programming in general. And knowing that a lot of the new things I learned because of this project will carry over into learning other high-level languages will serve me for years to come.

Overall, the biggest benefit of this experience has been discovering a method to teaching myself languages for the future. Even after graduation, we never stop learning in this field. Technologies and languages are constantly evolving and emerging. Having a good foundation for how to adapt to that change will make me a better programming and this project certainly helped with that.