Expect strange stuff here - it's where I'm teaching myself Javascript basics other pages will be created for jQuery, Angular 2 etc

January 5th 2015 8:30am:

This is the first of a series of pages (one per day) that will log my initial progress with learning basic javascript.

It's laid out this way for my own future reference and reminder how I actually tackled various concepts.

My experience with Javascript up till this point was merely knowing where to add scripts into the html from other sources.

My primary resource at time of writing is a copy of Javascript the good parts.

The strategy is straight forward enough - Examine the source to see the "Linq" style list maker: This page represents the latter part.

Why this approach? Most authorities say the best way to learn is by doing after all. However, I already have programming skills and conceptual knowledge. By taking the time to handwrite the basic elements and discuss them on paper, I'm hoping to gain several advantages when it comes to code wrangling.

Shorten the time between seeing the concept and understanding why it will help. Make it easier to remember the essentials by using more than one sensory route to take in the information. Have a log of notes that I can use to teach or remind myself in future.

Knowing javascript alone isn't enough for most of the commercial work either - there are several essential libraries that need digesting: jquery, angular are two I'm choosing to go with later on.

End of Day 1 of teaching myself Javascript from scratch:

It helps to have learn .Net languages like F# and C#, because the ES6 version of Javascript has syntax familiar to both languages.

Tomorrow, no cheating - a page a day seems a reasonable approach for review reasons!

January 5th 2015 15:21pm:

A dive into the canvas yields oppurtunity to learn a bit more about the ES6 Javascript stuff. Perhaps I'm mildly allergic to nested loops when I can do LINQ style code :).

The time format on these logs is for my future reference. Previous skills that have come handy on this first day are specifics like lambdas (Fat Arrows!) and .Net's LINQ.

And now because it's a nice way to learn, lets try drawing in Javascript