A Look Back: When I first started to learn Node.js

A Look Back: When I first started to learn Node.js

At the time of writing this article, it’s been less than 2 months of my node.js journey.

Today I am probably getting frustrated over some new mess of code, but if I look back at where I was... It will definitely help me get motivated. I tweeted my day to day journey over at my old twitter account for quick reference:

I was already into Node JS for a few days. I thought of documenting my journey, so I tweeted:

But I kept pushing it and see where it takes me. Although node is hard to grasp, it was fun.

I enrolled into Wes Bos’ node course. I was super excited. However, his course is not for beginners. It’s intermediate stuff. You need some ground before you get to it.

When I fail to understand a topic, it makes me frustrated. I then just want to quit it altogether.

So I was once again frustrated and thought of quitting for the second time. So I backed off a little and started looking out other resources.

Most of the YouTube’s intro-level stuff was really helpful.

The first few weeks I went practicing 4–6 hours node every day from MDN (Mozilla Developers Network).

I would follow the documentation and once I reach to a topic I don’t understand, I would then follow the next resource.

I just kept juggling between MDN, a node course from Lynda, and some YouTube tutorials until I nailed the basics down.

Eventually, there was a winning moment:

I got to save a message into MongoDB, that was awesome. It made me super confident.

After a while I was confident enough to resume the Wes Bos’ Node course from where I left off:

Then everyday I would learn something new about Node and build some stuff on my own:

Follow my new account @TamalWeb

So here I am, within the last 2 weeks I learned a TON!

The way I learn is, I watch the video lessons, then practice on my own. I then build another application from scratch up until I get to my limit. It takes me 1–2 days to fully plaster down one topic.

My code when I was first learning node:

Look at my current code in app.js:

I wrote that all by myself without having to look it up. I have learned all these by heart, know what each single piece does and can explain it to any beginners.

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Hey, do you want to learn more about Node JS and JavaScript in general? Head over to my blog where I am posting new stuff for beginners!