Don’t Fear JavaScript: The Comic

Written from Girona, Catalonia

Our story starts with an unlikely hero. A young designer with the desire to learn to code; in particular to unlock the mysterious wonders of a foreign language known only as — suspenseful pause — JavaScript.

Self-doubt and a cloudy picture of our hero’s true destiny plague him as we join his story…

  • The first panel from this comic strip. Our hero sits at his desk working with jQuery, gazes upwards and ponders.

    Hero: Man, I’m sick of limiting myself to jQuery examples but being more adventureous, writing some straight up JavaScript… that’s scary stuff

  • The second panel from this comic strip. Our hero cries while a crowd point and laugh as his hello world program goes up in flames behind him.
  • The third panel from this comic strip. Our hero lies in bed and thinks of starting to learn JavaScript tomorrow.

    Hero: Maybe I’ll start tomorrow…

  • Narrator: …Music indicating a lapse into a dream-like state plays…

  • The forth panel from this comic strip. Our hero, seemingly dreaming, encounters the JS GateReaper, gaurding the gate to the road to learning JavaScript.

    JS GateReaper: I am the JS GateReaper. This path is frought with danger and weirdness, from which there is no return. Do you still wish to know JS?

    Hero: YES! That felt a little overexcited and involuntary

    JS GateReaper: So be it. Enter

  • Narrator: …Just inside the gates…

  • The fifth panel from this comic strip. Our hero, having entered the gate encounters the JS Troll gaurding a bridge.

    JS Troll: I’m the JS Troll! You may cross my bridge when you have completed the following items on my list of neverendingness; master Node.js, learn Angular, learn Ember, read all 2,000,000 JS books ever written, write a 10,000 word thesis on the wonders of Backbone, organise a JS conference…

    Hero: Huh. Well I once wrote ‘hello universe’ app I thought that was novel, ambitious even…. How’s that?

    JS Troll: …beat Lea Verou at chess…

    Hero: No response, that dude just keeps reading

    Hero: Hey, where do I start?

    JS Troll: write a book

    Hero: He’s not paying attention. What if I just…

    JS Troll: …do lunch with Crockford…

  • The sixth panel from this comic strip. Our hero, having crossed the trolls bridge. The trolls keeps ranting in the distance.

    JS Troll: bla bla bla! bla bla bla! bla bla bla!

    Hero: I wonder if that encounter was a metaphor for my own self inflicted excuses and feelings of inadequatness… Nah, too contrived. What’s next?

  • The seventh panel from this comic strip. Our hero, Encounters the Samurinja.

    JS Samurinja: I am the JS Samurinja! Ever line of code I write is perfect. In fact all my programs consist of only one line of code, and they are all perfectly perfect. All of my GitHub repos consist of one commit, “Do app perfectly”. You dare say you “know js”!?

    Hero: Eh, nope, never said that

    JS Samurinja: Then we will code-duel to the death

    Hero: come on…

    JS Samurinja: Attack!

    Hero: Er, what about “Samurinja divided by zero”!

  • The eigth panel from this comic strip. Our hero, vanquishes the Samurinja into an infinite looping vortex.

    JS Samurinja: Noooooooooo!

  • Narrator: …Having passed his challenges, our hero skips happily along the path of continuous and steady learning…

  • The ninth panel from this comic strip. Our hero, passes through the challenges, exits the second gate and skips happily along the Camino de JS.
  • The tenth and final panel from this comic strip. Our hero, wakes up from the dream, which he has had many many times before.

    Hero: I need help…

Outro

Our hero over came personal limitations and ridiculous expectations, realising that knowing JavaScript, or to code in general, is more of a journey than a destination.

Personal conclusions on learning to code

  • Be brave and break stuff.
  • Pick a book or course, get a recommendation, and do that. Avoid paralysis by analysis, the best learning is in doing.
  • Reach out and find a JS buddy to bounce questions off.
  • Start to make something. Make something you want, something small or big, doesn’t matter. Make it wrong, learn from mistakes, just try something and ask a buddy to review.
  • The JS Jabber podcast is awesome.

I really enjoyed these articles from 24 Ways, about learning JavaScript, and to code:

Housekeeping

I did my best to make this little story semantic, accessible and responsive.

Published by Paddy on

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