My journey to learn JavaScript - Part 1

If you are interested to see all Steem related tools and services listed on one site, than I can highly recommend the site SteemTools.com created by @roelandp .

I browsed the site Friday evening and was particularly impressed with the services Steem-O-Graph and SteemStream (created by Roeland as well). The simplicity combined with visual and audio effects is appealing to me.

At that moment I decided to learn code myself in order to create these kind of sites as well. I know a bit of HTML and CSS from my study but was not sure how Roeland did all the animation and query related stuff. So I went on the Steemit Chat and pinged him a message. A few moments later he wrote me that the majority was done with HTML, CSS and **JavaScript**. Great! So, I am going to learn JavaScript which is not a bad choice since it seems to be the most widely used language according to GitHub.info and other sources.

I plan to start a series of posts where I write about how I approach learning JS, how I am progressing and where I stuck. This will not only put (healthy) pressure on my self to stay consistent but also is a great opportunity to deepen my knowledge since I need to explain what I have learned. (And for that I need to understand first)

So, with that being said, let’s see what I have learned so far shall we?

Statements

Wow, you might think, what are Statements, what does this mean? Let me attempt to explain. 

Simple put, a statement is something that tells a website (browser) what to do. A series of statements make out an actual JS application.

A statement example:

if(tarekSteemPowerValue < 50000) {
alert(“Work harder man!”);
} else {
console.log(“Well done, book ticket’s to Hawaii”);
}

Variables

A variable is kind of “box” where you can store one item. If you want to store many items in one “box”, than that is actually called an object. (More on that later!).

A Variable example:

var pi = 3.14159;

From now on every time I want to do a calculation using the value of pi, I don’t need to write down all digits but can use my box “pi” where the value is stored.

For example:

console.log(pi + 1);

Instead of:

console.log(3.14159 + 1);

I hope this brief introduction was useful. I am looking forward to continue with the series on a regular basis.