beginner – Code Notes

5-minute JavaScript tutorials

So many tutorial videos are so darned long! This summer, I set out to make a new series of videos for absolute beginners in JavaScript. They are free on YouTube, and here is the playlist:

JavaScript Beginners

Most of these video are shorter than 5 minutes. Only one is longer than 6 minutes (6:43), and I might try to go back and make that one shorter.

I have tried to title each video very specifically so that you can scan the playlist and pick a focused topic without thinking too hard.

The idea was to demonstrate characteristics of JavaScript, as well as the most basic programming concepts, in the JavaScript console — which every modern web browser has. I hope this will encourage beginners to play along and try things out in the console themselves.

Beginner JavaScript Resources

Eloquent JavaScript, 3rd edition (2018), by Marijn Haverbeke: This free online book is available as a PDF, EPUB or MOBI (Kindle) download. I recommend it highly (as do many others).

I urge you to seek out resources at Mozilla Developer Network (MDN) and NOT at W3schools. Here are some great MDN resources for finding answers about JavaScript:

JavaScript basics
JavaScript First Steps (variables, basic math, other basics)
JavaScript building blocks (functions and more advanced beginner skills)
Data types and objects (more advanced)

The excellent book series You Don’t Know JS is fully available online to read for free.

These two recently updated Codecademy courses are interactive, hands-on, and really great for beginners:

If you learned jQuery back when it was truly necessary, you might (like me) appreciate this resource for doing all those things using pure vanilla JavaScript instead: plainJS – The Vanilla JavaScript Repository

Advice for starting to learn to code

Start learning HTML and CSS here:
https://www.codecademy.com/learn/learn-html
https://www.codecademy.com/learn/learn-css

Free interactive exercises at Dash/General Assembly:
https://dash.generalassemb.ly/

Supplement your HTML and CSS learning:
http://htmldog.com/guides/

Best first website host for students and faculty:
Reclaim Hosting
Your first domain name registration is free.

Look stuff up and get good answers: HTML
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML

Look stuff up and get good answers: CSS
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS

Anything from W3schools — DON’T USE IT!
Do not confuse the bad W3schools with the good, proper W3C —
https://www.w3.org/standards/

After you feel comfortable with HTML and CSS, start learning JavaScript.
NOT JAVA! That is a completely different language.
JavaScript makes the web interactive.
https://www.codecademy.com/learn/introduction-to-javascript

Best book for learners — new edition will be published in February 2018:
https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Web-Design-Beginners-JavaScript/dp/1491960205

A good book for learning JavaScript and jQuery:
https://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-JQuery-Interactive-Front-End-Development/dp/1118531647

Where to write your code

The best code editor is ATOM (Mac and Windows):
https://atom.io/

NOT DREAMWEAVER — never Dreamweaver!

Play with code interactively here:

Links updated Nov 9, 2017