Articles

Dealing with Imposter Syndrome

Two days ago, I sent out a tweet that says, “The more I learn about code, the less I realize I know, and the less confident I feel about teaching people how to code. Compound this with the fact that I’m writing a course AND selling it”.

That sums up how I’m feeling these two days. If I were to put it in a nice way—I feel like shit. I haven’t been sleeping well the entire week. I woke up today at 3am these two days.

When I had dinner with my wife yesterday, she said I look like I might be better off dead. Obviously that’s not what she said in my face, but that’s what I inferred.

CSS Transitions explained

The simplest (and most straightforward) way to animate your components is through CSS Transitions. In this article, you’ll learn how CSS Transitions work, and how to make animations with it.

How to make interactive components

How do you make a website interactive? That’s one question that many beginners get stuck at. In this video, I walk you through you need to know to build an interactive website.

Understanding for loops

Let’s say you want to run a function, bounceBall, four times. How would you do it? Like this?

function bounceBall() {
// bounce the ball here
}
bounceBall()
bounceBall()
bounceBall()
bounceBall()

This approach is great if you need to bounceBall only for a few times. What happens if you need to bounceBall for a hundred times?

The better way is through a for loop.

Understanding if/else statements

Let’s say you’re walking on a busy street in the middle of town. You’re about to cross the road when you notice the traffic light for pedestrians turns red. What do you do?

You stop, don’t you?

And what happens when the light turns green again? You start walking.

We can put this analogy into code too. It sounds something like: “If the light turns red, stop walking. Otherwise, continue walking”.

And that, my friend, is the foundation of an if/else statement.

How to debug Javascript errors

It’s normal for you to make errors when you code. So if you see an error, you don’t have to be afraid. I get error messages all the time. When I have bad days, I get more error messages!

Learning JavaScript – where should you start and what to do when you’re stuck?

Have you tried to learn a JavaScript related topic/framework and found that you understand almost nothing?

There is a simple reason why you don’t understand what you’re learning – you skipped steps. You tried to learn something advanced without having the fundamentals to back yourself up.

What you’re trying to do by learning things that are far too advanced is like trying to drive an F1 without a drivers’ license. Can you imagine how badly you’ll crash?

Console.log everything!

When you write Javascript, you’re bound to be unsure of something in your code somewhere. That’s a normal thing.

When you’re unsure, you need to clarify what that unknown thing is. Otherwise, you won’t be able to code anything up.

And how do you clarify?

You write console.log statements.

Understanding JavaScript Functions

Imagine you live in an village without tap water. To get water, you need to take a empty bucket, head to the well in the middle of the village, draw water from the well and head back home.

You need to draw water from this well multiple times a day. It’s a hassle to say “I’m going to take an empty bucket, go to the well, draw water and bring back home” every time you explain what you’re doing.

To shorten it, you can say you’re going to “draw water”.

And my friend, you’ve created a function.

Should you use semicolons in JavaScript?

I promised I’d start making videos last week, didn’t I? Well, here’s the first video! Today, I’d like to talk about semicolons.

There are people out there that say you’re not a real developer if you don’t use semi-colons in JavaScript. Is that really true? Should you listen to them and use semi-colons?

That’s what I dive into in this video. I also show a very important tool to help you write good, consistent code in the video.