The day was January 25th and it was time for the second part of the Coding Fundamentals: JavaScript Basics course. Everyone came back and was even more motivated and determined to explore even more how special (as our mentor likes to point out) JavaScript actually is.
This time we got to learn about “Loop For” and “Loop While”. Loops can execute a block of code as long as a specified condition is true. They are handy, if you want to run the same code over and over again, each time with a different value. The difference between “Loop For” and “Loop While” is that “For” is used when you know how many times the program will be executed and “While” is used when you don’t know.
After that it was time for our mentor to introduce us to Arrays. JavaScript arrays are used to store multiple values in a single variable. For example, arr.lenght; gets the number of elements, arr.unshift(n); adds an element at the beginning and arr.toString(); returns the array as a string.
Not wasting valuable time, our mentor Todor introduced us to Objects (which we learned are variables that can contain many data values) and Functions (A JavaScript function is a block of code designed to perform a particular task. A JavaScript function is executed when something invokes it.)
After an hour and a half of us absorbing the new information, everyone kept their smiles on and didn’t hesitate to ask away if something was not clear enough. And just like the previous time, we were all assigned some tasks that we had to work on at home and practice on what we’ve learned during the time we spent at 3HUB / trio-hub.
Moving forward to the first day of February when the third part on the course was held, this time we had the chance to learn a bit about jQuery, a cross-platform JavaScript library, which is said to be the most widely deployed JavaScript library by a large margin. jQuery's syntax is designed to make it easier to navigate a document, create animations, handle events and many more. In this course we managed to see some of the jQuery functions in action which was very interesting and not going to lie – quite challenging.
The last part of the course was on the 15 th of February and this time with the help and supervision of our kind mentor, we managed to build a little slideshow project. We had some difficulties in the process but giving up was not even an option as we were so close to the finish line. It was also time for us to randomly pick our own projects that we had to work on at home and then present in front of everyone as a final step to successfully finish the JavaScript course. Working on these projects was definitely a test to what we’ve managed to learn during the past month. Some of us were a bit nervous but everyone did an amazing job with their presentations.
This JavaScript course was honestly a great experience, a very challenging one, but that was a big part of why we enjoyed it so much. It just showed how with some motivation and persistence learning how to code is possible for everyone. All you have to do is just start and not get discouraged if it doesn’t work the way you expect it the first time, just try again and again until you succeed. To say that it’s not hard would be a lie, but the satisfaction, the joy, feeling proud of yourself after you finish the project that you’ve been working on are so rewarding and definitely overweight all the difficulties that you meet along the way.
I’d like to express my gratitude to our mentor Todor Nikolov for being so patient with us and the amazing team of Coding Girls Plovdiv that made all of this possible. A huge thank you also to their community partner 3HUB / trio-hub from Trio Interactive for making the events happen and for hosting the course for FREE.