Thirty Days of JavaScript – Update

I have failed in my challenge to complete Thirty Days of JavaScript in April. I got off to a strong start, completing twelve of the challenges in thirteen days, but then life got in the way – some other things cropped up and it got shuffled down the priority list for what seems to be my ever decreasing amount of free time after the boys have gone to bed.

I enjoyed getting my teeth back into JavaScript, my favourite daily assignment was the video player on day eleven, shown above, where I had to add the video control elements and link them to the JavaScript video player control methods. Not only was it a fun task, but I was able to complete large parts of it myself without needing to watch the course notes to figure out the correct techniques. It really felt like I had made good progress.

The lesson I felt that I struggled with the most was the “Array Cardio” on day four. I was not familiar with the various methods to manipulate data in arrays, so this is one part of the challenge that I will be revisiting when I have completed the other tasks. The reason I decided to tackle the thirty days of JavaScript was to improve my skills – identifying areas that need more work is a key part of this, so am taking it as a positive.

After mentioning in my original post how much I appreciated the debugging setup in VSCode I have not been able to get it working again. I think either Chrome or a VSCode extension has updated. Whilst I was focused on “must complete a task each day” I was not able to fully investigate it. I have a good workflow going with Microsoft’s Edge browser, but it would be easier to have console output straight into VSCode again – something else to investigate.

I have really enjoyed the tasks, and definitely feel like my JavaScript skills are improving, so I am committed to completing the challenge. Whilst I would like to say that I will finish the thirty days of JavaScript in the next few weeks, I need to be realistic and balance it with my other commitments. That said, I am going to aim for three episodes a week, then revisiting the areas I have struggled with There is also a little JavaScript project that I have been meaning to do for a few years, so I will do that as a little end of course assignment.