Illustrated JavaScript coding course for absolute beginners [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

Illustrated JavaScript coding course for absolute beginners [pdf]

codeguppy.com

51 pointslovegrenoble12 comments

I prefer to choose a JavaScript mini-project and build it from scratch rather than going through the slides. The real pain of learning something lies in the errors. Also, https://eloquentjavascript.net/ is a good resource for JavaScript beginners to start their journey.

it introduces variables on the 93th slide and uses the site's functions until then. I'd say it's more like an illustrated codeguppy js course than a general js course.

I think if your market is mostly kids it might be easier for them to be able to click on the shapes/sprites and have the parameters UI open up for that clicked object as you get used to this in many apps. E.g. they could tweak the parameters "x, y, size, fill, etc" and see real time how the code changed. Or have the parameter name hover over the parameter like in some jetbrains products.

You are not completely wrong, but it certainly looks like the standard HTML canvas API as opposed to some API specific to codeguppy. The slides do not clarify this. The point at the beginning of the slide deck is to jump into writing the text immediately as opposed to "block" type languages like Scratch.

We need more of these things.

Just put off by being shepherded right away into creating an account. That usually sends me packing.

One thing that always frustrated me about advanced Javascript tutorials (not like this one) is that they don't include an explanation of the runtime model/structure - what "async" even means practically. The "What the heck is the event loop anyway?" talk (https://youtu.be/8aGhZQkoFbQ?si=wJIqnm3jEYB-uFSO) with its associated website (down at the moment? https://latentflip.com/what-is-the-event-loop-anyway) is amazing and essential for that

Hi there -- This is Adrian, the author of the course and codeguppy.com platform. First of all: thank you very much for your feedback.

As of now, the course has 693 slides and covers also more advanced concepts such as closures and classes.

The intended audience for the course are teachers ... but independent learners (especially those interested in p5.js) may find the course useful as well.

This is intended for middle and high school students (who has never been exposed to coding). I used to teach coding to kids in school, so this is an invaluable free resource, and I might use it for teaching javascript in future

200 slides to cover loops and conditionals ?

Not inherently bad. Especially considering that the target audience is people who have never said “hello world”, it is invaluable to have frequent opportunities for finding success.

I'm conflicted on such sandboxed approaches. On one hand it makes sense to shield learners from more frustrating things like grokking actual software artifacts, systems design problems and interfaces. On the other hand, programming logic per se is pretty damned simple, shouldn't take a hundred slides to impart, and the real challenge is actually figuring out interfaces and artifacts.

If we create the expectation that it's all about logic and that the environment should automagically work, aren't we crippling learners? How can someone design or debug if they don't know how things actually fit together behind the scenes?

Says pdf file corrupted when trying to open via browser and okular. is it just me?

Yes, just clicked on the link on Firefox nightly on Android and opens ok for me

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