Using Javascipt: it isn’t my first rodeo…
…but I still get knocked off my feet anyway.
I had an “idea” of what Javascript was even when I first started out in EE 160, when I was programming spaghetti code in C, all those semesters ago. It wasn’t until about last year – Summer 2018 – when I was fully introduced to the application of it on a website. I was an intern at Caesars Entertainment in Las Vegas, NV, and one of the first things they introduced me to was a snippet of Javascript code that detected where a person was based on their IP address (I ended up not doing anything Web Dev related in that internship). Earlier this year, I joined the Smart Campus Energy Lab (SCEL) Dashboard Team, where I had to learn Javascript in order to read and parse a .csv file. I practiced Javascript over the summer, and now, here I am, fully submerging myself into a whole new Javascript world.
Because of my background in C, Java, and C++, learning Javascript isn’t hard at all – in fact, I can grasp Javascript way easier than HTML or CSS, which are both also needed in Web Development. However, the hardest thing about Javascript is, in my honest opinion:
I didn’t realize just how many functions there are in Javascript. It’s insane to me. For example, the spread operator in E6, or the arrow function (personally, my favorite way of declaring a function). Dealing with objects, object literals – it’s overwhelming! Yet, I am determined to learn it all, for the sake of my career, and my hobbies. I aspire to be a Web Developer and a UX/UI Designer, and learning Javascript as a foundation is perfect place to start. And even though it is a lot to take in, I want to share one of the most important quotes from the Dev Team I worked with over the summer:
“As a web developer, StackExchange is and will always be your best friend.”
So I have hope for myself.
Now, with that said about Javascript, I find Professor Johnson’s athletic software engineering pedagogy really interesting, because not only does it stress me out, it evokes the extremely competitive trait I have and makes me want to do better. Over the years, I’ve found that containable stress is a driving factor in my ability to succeed. I know I can figure X out in Y amount of time, I just need to push myself a little harder. The practice WODs and the bWODs were very useful, but I realized I just need to think outside of the box and pay attention to detail a lot more.
Regardless, I’m very excited about this class (finally excited about a class –wow!) and the skills it’ll bring me when I’m done.