Up & Going

Foreword

What was the last new thing you learned?

Perhaps it was a foreign language, like Italian or German. Or maybe it was a graphics editor, like Photoshop. Or a cooking technique or woodworking or an exercise routine. I want you to remember that feeling when you finally got it: the lightbulb moment. When things went from blurry to crystal clear, as you mastered the table saw or understood the difference between masculine and feminine nouns in French. How did it feel? Pretty amazing, right?

Now I want you to travel back a little bit further in your memory to right before you learned your new skill. How did that feel? Probably slightly intimidating and maybe a little bit frustrating, right? At one point, we all did not know the things that we know now and that’s totally OK; we all start somewhere. Learning new material is an exciting adventure, especially if you are looking to learn the subject efficiently.

I teach a lot of beginner coding classes. The students who take my classes have often tried teaching themselves subjects like HTML or JavaScript by reading blog posts or copying and pasting code, but they haven’t been able to truly master the material that will allow them to code their desired outcome. And because they don’t truly grasp the ins and outs of certain coding topics, they can’t write powerful code or debug their own work, as they don’t really understand what is happening.

I always believe in teaching my classes the proper way, meaning I teach web standards, semantic markup, well-commented code, and other best practices. I cover the subject in a thorough manner to explain the hows and whys, without just tossing out code to copy and paste. When you strive to comprehend your code, you create better work and become better at what you do. The code isn’t just your job anymore, it’s your craft. This is why I love Up & Going. Kyle takes us on a deep dive through syntax and terminology to give a great introduction to JavaScript without cutting corners. This book doesn’t skim over the surface, but really allows us to genuinely understand the concepts we will be writing.

Because it’s not enough to be able to duplicate jQuery snippets into your website, the same way it’s not enough to learn how to open, close, and save a document in Photoshop. Sure, once I learn a few basics about the program I could create and share a design I made. But without legitimately knowing the tools and what is behind them, how can I define a grid, or craft a legible type system, or optimize graphics for web use. The same goes for JavaScript. Without knowing how loops work, or how to define variables, or what scope is, we won’t be writing the best code we can. We don’t want to settle for anything less -- this is, after all, our craft.

The more you are exposed to JavaScript, the clearer it becomes. Words like closures, objects, and methods might seem out of reach to you now, but this book will help those terms come into clarity. I want you to keep those two feelings of before and after you learn something in mind as you begin this book. It might seem daunting, but you’ve picked up this book because you are starting an awesome journey to hone your knowledge. Up & Going is the start of our path to understanding programming. Enjoy the lightbulb moments!

Jenn Lukas jennlukas.com (opens in a new tab), @jennlukas (opens in a new tab) Front-end consultant