You've heard many people say this. But is it true?
I knew teaching had benefits. For example, if you teach, people will know you exist. People may be able to learn from your experience. But learn? I was skeptical.
But I realized the statement is true. You learn best when you teach. I can vouch for it after teaching frontend development for many years.
This article explains my thoughts on why teaching others help you learn.
A month ago I told you I made a major decision for Learn JavaScript—to restructure the course materials I created—and I'm here to update you on the results!
This article is a response to a question I asked last week. I wanted to know if I should teach authentication in Learn JavaScript. Since I'm building Learn JavaScript for students like you, I wanted to hear your opinions.
I read through a hundred responses. I gave myself a week to think through it. And I came to a conclusion.
I'm going to teach authentication in a separate course.
There was a time when web design got monotonous. Designers and developers built the same kinds of websites over and over again, so much so that we were mocked by people in our own industry for creating only two kinds of websites:
<Image
src="/src/assets/2018/css-features/two-websites.png"
alt="A tweet by Jon Gold asking: “which one of the two possible websites are you currently designing?”"
/>
Is this the limit of what our “creative” minds can achieve? This thought sent an incontrollable pang of sadness into my heart.
I don’t want to admit it, but maybe that was the best we could accomplish back then. Maybe we didn’t have suitable tools to make creative designs. The demands of the web were evolving quickly, but we were stuck with ancient techniques like floats and tables.
Today, the design landscape has changed completely. We’re equipped with new and powerful tools — CSS Grid, CSS custom properties, CSS shapes and CSS writing-mode, to name a few — that we can use to exercise our creativity.
Do you worry about the quality of your code? Are you afraid of writing bad code? If someone reads your code and they say it sucks, how would it make you feel?
I ran into a problem while writing Learn JavaScript. This problem is about teaching Ajax.
I'm deciding between three possible solutions right now. Since I am making Learn JavaScript for people like you, I want to hear your thoughts before I decide.
I'm a weirdo. I'm always working (either coding or teaching you how to code). I code on during work, at night, and even on weekends. I can't seem to separate myself from work.
Recently, I learned to relax. I discovered that one of my favorite activities is to watch movies. I only watch some of them though. For example, I chase after every movie in the Marvel universe (for Avengers), but I don't watch anything related to Star Wars.
But why? Are Marvel movies better made than Star Wars? Do they contain more compelling stories? Do they have better actions and effects?
Not exactly.
I wanted to know why I watched some movies and not others, so I dug into my own psychology (like I said, I'm a weirdo; forgive me for doing weird things). I found a surprising reason. I can even use this reason to explain how I learned to code 😂.
Hey, it's Zell. Today I want to tell you about an update to Learn JavaScript and a big decision I made.
I made a decision to restructure Learn JavaScript. That means I took whatever I wrote—about 9 chapters (and 60+ lessons)—and rewrote them in a different format.
This was a difficult decision because I wanted to complete and release Learn JavaScript by July 2018. If I did the restructure I won't be able to complete the course.
Second, I'm afraid I'll portray the image that I don't complete projects by the deadlines I set, which in my mind, means people who invested in the preorders don't get the products in time. I'm afraid that you'll think badly of me if I do the restructure.
But I still went ahead with it. The question is why.
A good JavaScript developer needs to know how to traverse the DOM—it's the act of selecting an element from another element.
But why do we need to learn to traverse the DOM? Isn't document.querySelector enough for most of our needs?
In this article, I'm going to show you why traversing is better that document.querySelector, and how to traverse like a pro. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the article!
Hey, it's Zell. Today, we have a question from a student from prefers to remain anonymous. I'm going to call this student May.
Here's her question:
May freaks out whenever a recruiter asks her to talk about a bad experience in an interview. She had a complicated situation; she didn't want to blame the company she was at, and she didn't want to say she lacked experience (and therefore sucked).
She tried to answer the question, didn't get positive results from her answers, and she's now considering lying about the bad experience to find a job.
You learned how to build a robust calculator in the previous two lessons. Unfortunately, the code we created together confusing. If you tried to read the code again, you'll definitely get lost.
That's why we need to refactor. In this lesson, you'll learn how to refactor the calculator with some JavaScript best practices.