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.

JavaScript, alongside HTML and CSS is one of the three legs of web development. HTML defines the content, CSS the styling/layout and JavaScript defines the behaviour of a webpage. Recently I have realised that my web development tripod is a bit wonky. I studied JavaScript at university, I have barely used it since, only occasionally in frameworks, such as Bootstrap. I also used Flash ActionScript, which is a similar language, in my day job developing automotive touch screen interfaces, but even that was ten years ago. Instead I have kept all the logic of my websites server side, using PHP to control the behaviour, which is still a valid way of doing things, but I should not be relying on it.

JavaScript has evolved since I used it – frameworks such, as Vue and React, have become the mainstay, the “ES6” has come along – replacing “var” with “let” or “const”, and you can even run it server side with Node.js. JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) also seems to have largely replaced XML. Basically JavaScript has matured and seems to be here to stay! Therefore I decided it was about time brush up my skills. Before I tackle frameworks I wanted to get get the basics right, and refresh my vanilla JavaScript knowledge. Whilst looking for inspiration I came across 30 days of JavaScript, which seemed to be pitched at my level – knowing the basics, but needing to improve. I learn best by working on projects, so the thought of thirty small projects to work on really appealed to me.

You may be able to tell from recent posts (HKT Winter Defiance Handbook and Godiva Trail Riders Lockdown Challenge) that I like to set myself a challenge. So as April has thirty days, and there are thirty exercises, I am going to try to get them all done in April! I am aiming for one per day, but I may have to catch up/get ahead of myself depending on other commitments. I will post again at the end of the month, with my progress, what I have learned and which exercises have been my favourite.

I have completed the first challenge, the JavaScript drum kit at the top of the page. The content and structure were cloned from GitHub and the challenge/tutorial was write the JavaScript to capture the keyboard presses and assign them to the corresponding sound file, then play it and add the animation. It was definitely at the right sort of level for me, I needed to look up a couple of things to understand what they were doing, but learning is the main goal behind this challenge. Possibly the hardest thing was getting my Visual Studio Code set up for debugging JavaScript – switching to Chrome, after reading this guide, seemed to do the job. Hopefully over the course of the month I will be able to see if I can get debugging working in Firefox or even Edge.