As you can probably tell by the title, I am completely new to Javascript. If we’re being completely honest, learning new languages scares me. Not just coding languages, French scares me too! Infact, I attempted to take ICS 314 (the current course I’m learning Javascript in) before a couple semesters back, but ended up being too intimidated by the inclass workouts and withdrawing from the class. I will make sure this Javascript learning experience will be different! Infact, fully participating and attempting to do the Free Code Camp exercises has made me a bit more confident in learning this new language’s syntax already. Struggling may feel terrible, but it turns out is one of the only ways to grow, which brings us to our WODS, or workouts of the day.
Now if you’re not familiar with the term “WOD”, don’t worry, neither was I. A WOD is a timed coding problem that is either pass or fail depending on if your code works or doesn’t. Sounds stressful right? It totally is, but struggling means growing, right?
With the practice workouts I still find myself being tripped up by the syntax. The first time running through an exercise I find that I either complete it in the “standard” time limit or don’t finish within the time limit at all. It’s still quite early in the semester, and I’m really hoping to improve that. It does feel like it helps to memorize syntax by repeating the workout and getting lower times, but it doesn’t make me confident that I’m learning well enough to be able to handle a real workout that actually goes towards my grade. Repeating these workouts makes me wonder, am I really getting better, or am I just memorizing what I need for now? Will I be able to apply it when it matters? I suppose only time will tell at this point, but one thing our professor said rings true to me. These timed workouts will put us in stressful situations, and the only way to get used to a stressful situation is to keep putting yourself in it. I can only hope that one day, the mention of a WOD won’t make me panic.