I’d been neglecting the Odin Project a little bit lately, trying to get a better handle on JavaScript before continuing. I decided it was time to get back on track with it at the end of last week though, so I started tackling the exercises in the JavaScript Basics section.

I did well in maths at school, but it wasn’t my favourite subject by any means. And as a pastry chef and baker, I’m pretty good with ratios and percentages, but that’s about it- maths just haven’t been a massive part of my life.

When I saw that the JavaScript exercises were maths problems I may have let out an audible sigh… more than once. I managed to find the solution to each problem, but I did have to spend a fair amount of time on Google and youtube finding out how people tackled different parts of the exercises. I didn’t just copy and paste anyone’s solution- that was really important to me; I want to know exactly what my code does, and why! For example, I was having trouble getting my Fibonacci sequence to generate properly, so I watched a few videos of people writing code to do that [and just that- I just looked at that part of the problem first,] and then went back to my code and made the changes I needed to make it work. You can see the JavaScript solutions here, or you can see it in the browser here– where I’ve laid out the questions and you have a button to run the code. That second page was done afterwards; I thought it would be good to write up the html and css so that no exercise or project is stand-alone code, and it also gave me just a little bit more practice with html and css.

I don’t feel like I’ve had enough practice with JavaScript yet. I think Codecademy was a good place to start, and Eloquent JavaScript is a great resource, but in my opinion it’s a bit steep, so I’m currently looking for other resources that I can use to flesh out my knowledge. I’d love to be able to work my way through all of Eloquent JavaScript, but I’ll definitely need some help so that I’m not spending hours looking for help on every exercise!

I’ve started on jQuery 101 [the next section in the Odin Project,] and it’s proving a lot easier for me to digest than JavaScript. Doing the first part of jQuery 101 has even made a few JavaScript things “click” in my head. The holidays are a little hectic [just a little! 😛 ] but I’m still hoping to make good progress in my course!

Hope everyone enjoys their holidays! If anyone has a site or resource that they used to learn JavaScript I’d love to hear from you!