JavaScript First Steps

Companion site & code exercises for the Frontend Masters course "JavaScript First Steps"

Contents:

• Part 1:
  • Slides
  • Tic Tac Toe
• Part 2:
  • Slides
  • JS Quiz (starter, finished, fancy)
• Part 3:
  • Slides
  • Doggo Fetch (starter, finished; modular, utilities)

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Launch your JavaScript journey with this friendly, practical introduction from Anjana Vakil

This course will lead you through your first steps with the JavaScript programming language, equip you with the key concepts & skills you need to become a productive JS programmer, and give you a solid foundation for your onward journey into advanced JS, functional programming, frontend frameworks, and beyond.

Benefits:

• Learn the fundamentals of programming in JavaScript, starting from scratch
• Conquer core concepts related to data types, objects, arrays, and functions
• Get cozy with JS syntax, including operators, variables, loops, and branching logic
• Befriend modern JS features such as arrow functions, destructuring, promises, and async/await
• Build a strong foundation to start learning advanced JS, functional programming, or frameworks like React

Course description

In this course, we'll start from square one to take our first steps into the wide world of JavaScript, and we'll walk away with the core skills we need to become productive JavaScript programmers. Through a series of hands-on projects, we'll learn how to write our own JS code to manipulate and add interactivity to our websites, in cooperation with our friends HTML & CSS. We'll wrap our heads around the building blocks of JS programs, including data types, objects, arrays, and functions, and how to work with them using core language features like operators, variables, loops, and branching logic. We'll even encounter modern JS features & syntax such as arrow functions, destructuring, promises and async/await. After this course we'll be ready to dive deeper into topics like advanced JS, functional programming, frontend frameworks like React, or backend programming with Node.

Audience

• Are you looking to add JavaScript to your web developer skillset after studying HTML & CSS?
• Do you want to start learning functional programming or a functional-inspired framework like React, but need to bring your JS up to speed first?
• Have you written some code in a language like Python or Ruby, and now want to add JS to your repertoire?
• Did you learn some JS in the past, and want to review the fundamentals and learn newer language features?

If any or all of those are true, this is the perfect course for you!

Prerequisites:

• We will assume no prior familiarity with JavaScript or programming; folks who have already written some JS or a different scripting language may find some of the modules a helpful review
• We will assume participants are familiar with basic HTML and CSS, though these will be tangential to the course and folks who are unfamiliar are welcome and will still be able to follow along
• Participants will only need a laptop with a web browser (Firefox or Chrome recommended)

Course outline

• Part 1
  • Intro & course overview
  • JavaScript: What? Why? How?
  • Working with the DOM (HTML)
  • Data Types
  • Working with Strings
  • Operators & Expressions
  • Variables
  • Objects & Arrays
• Part 2
  • Part 2 project overview
  • Working with a code editor
  • Functions & Scope
  • Event Handlers
  • Conditionals
  • Loops
• Part 3
  • Part 3 project overview
  • Fetch
  • Promises
  • Async/Await
  • Map & Filter
  • Destructuring & spread syntax
  • Debugging & error handling
  • Modules, import & export
  • Course recap & next steps