Abrupt Introduction Back to Coding
28 Aug 2023
If there’s no struggle, there’s no progress.
ICS314 and the introduction to JavaScript has been an exciting, refreshing, yet exhausting experience. Calling me unprepared would be an understatement, I have not taken any coding classes or touched coding at all for a whole entire year, and with only some experiences on coding with Java through some introductory coding classes I took during my freshmen year, I headed recklessly into the 140 exercises on introduction to JavaScript on FreeCodeCamp. The first half of the exercises were very straight forward, introducing variables, declaration of functions and objects, and other simple syntax that was very similar to Java.
However, it took a turn for the worse as I was introduced to concepts like deconstruction, where we can shorten the syntax of certain declarations and methods, as well as other ES6 updates that were added to JavaScript in recent years. Although these changes all make JavaScript more flexible and efficient, it was a very foreign concept to me, as I was never taught these in Java. It was a emotional rollercoaster as I quickly went from feeling confident in my rusty coding skills to a state of despair as I struggle to understand and incorporate the new syntax that I am reading right in front of me. After an intense and exhausting 4 hours of doing the exercises, I was finally able to mark it off my assignment list, but this experience will forever be stuck in my memory cabinets.
JavaScript as a language
Looking at JavaScript after the exercises, I understand why many people say that it’s a language that takes all the good aspects of Java, C, and C++ and incorporates it into one single language, that can be used in many different fields. One of the things that I really enjoy about the langugage is the simplicity compared to Java, there’s a lot less typing to write functions, and even declaring objects is simple. As a result, there’s a lot less clutter on the screen, making it very simple to read and understand each line of code. However, sometimes the simplicity can also be a disadvantage, such as the deconstruction and other syntax introduced in ES6. It might just be that I am still unfamiliar to JavaScript, but it took a while to get the hang of deconstruction, how to simplify the syntax to declaring variables, using functions and objects. So far, I have only just touched the surface of JavaScript, so I expect to both learn and struggle during my chapter with JavaScript, as that is the only way for me to move forward in my coding journey.
Athletic Coding?
Going into this class, I was already familiar with the flipped classroom teaching style that was also incorporated into the 2 introduction to Java classes I had taken previously. In addition to that, this class introduced something called a WoD, or work of the week. It was additional practice that we would get to reinforce the materials that we would be learning on our own each week. The catch to this is that it was timed, something deeply related to stress. I first experienced the harsh reality of WoDs during my first practice WoD that we were supposed to do on our own after completing the FreeCodeCamp exercises. It was a very simple programming question, that asked us to write a simple program, but as soon as I started the stopwatch, my mind went completely blank as I stared at the question for a solid minute before I was able to start moving my fingers on the keyboard. It was a combination of my rusty coding skills, along with the stress of a timed activity that had stopped my brain from functioning. Although I was able to finish the question within the average rating, it still showed me how stressful and intense future WoDs can be, especially doing it in class. In my opinion, I believe WoDs will be very effective in training and strengthening the concepts that we learn every week, it forces us to not only go through the materials thoroughly, but also have us put those concepts into practice. It will be a struggle, just like everything else in life will be, but by going through the struggle, can we grow as a person, and move forward.