How I Learned JavaScript

I have been using Ruby for a long time. The oldest blog post I have tagged Ruby is from 2005 (in Croatian). In 2015 I have started using JavaScript. Several people in the last few months have asked me how I learned it. I have some notes, emails and posts, so I thought it might be useful to write a post about it.

Online Courses

I have finished JavaScript course at Codecademy and several NodeSchool workshoppers.

Events

I went to NodeSchool International Day 2016 organized by local JavaScript group. It was a good networking experience and I got a couple of good book recommendations.

I gave Selenium + JavaScript = 😕🤔😳 talk several times.

Books

I have read several books.

Eloquent JavaScript by Marijn Haverbeke. Very good book, covers most of the stuff a beginner should know. Recommended. Rating 4/5.

You Don’t Know JS (book series) by Kyle Simpson. I have only read Up & Going. It’s a good introduction to the language. I think the series would get a better rating, but since I have read only the first book, and it was pretty basic, it got rating 3/5.

JavaScript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford. I have read it two times in the last few years. Both times it was over my head. I would not recommend it for beginners. Rating 3/5.

Code

You can not lean a language without solving problems with it. One of the projects I created is Playing Set game with JavaScript and Selenium. I also create a Git repository for each book. If the book has exercises, I store the code I write in the repository, zeljkofilipin/eloquent-javascript for example. I also have repositories for online courses, zeljkofilipin/javascripting for example. I write code as part of my job. Examples are wikimedia/mediawiki and macbre/nodemw.