LEARN HOW TO BUILD SH*T WITH
VANILLA JAVASCRIPT.

I started learning javascript around 2012.

Started with w3schools. The OG classic.

Then did some codecadmy tracks. Which I continued to revisit and redo multiple times throughout the years.

I must've done that Javascript track alone — at least a dozen times but, I digress.

After finishing the first ever Codeacademy Javascript track along with the html&css tracks, it really gave me a sense of accomplishment, progress, and felt like I learned a lot.

Key words here: "felt like"

See, the verbose instructions handholding through exercises on many different concepts in silos along with colorful gamification really hit all the dopamine centers in my brain.

But at the end of it, I couldn't build a single thing if my life depended on it... not even a damn todolist app.

So, as most natural sane people would, I quit and tried some other things (story for another time).

About a year or so later, I came across a company called Teamtreehouse which peaked my interest in learning to code again.

The site was beautifully designed with slick little animations.

The hollywood level ultra HD video tutorials with crisp visuals of the code along with instructors who spoke perfect english without stumbling on a single word left a very, very good impression on my fresh-off-the-boat immigrant brain.

Oh.. and the gamification this time was on steroids. Absolutely took a massive dump on codecademy's UI at the time.

I thought this was it. I felt like I was REALLY learning this time. Made a good dent on a lot of the lessons.

But.. history rhymes yet again.

After about 2.5 months, I quit Teamtreehouse. Even though I was learning a lot of concepts, nothing was connected. It was all in silos in my head and again, couldn't build a thing.

I would go on to repeat this awful cycle at least a dozen times the next few years...

start a new language, learn a few months, quit, repeat...

start a new framework, try for a few months, quit, repeat...

start a new *amazing* resource, quit again after a few months, repeat...

...

until 2015.

The year I hit rock bottom.

I decided to give it one last crack.

And although I did end up sleeping in my car for about 8 months, this time — I didn't quit.

I *actually* made it through.

I finally was able to build things from scratch.

Became good enough at Javascript and dev in general to be able to solve most basic to intermediate algos, learn new tools/concepts a lot easier, and finally was able to build things from scratch instead of just relying on pre-built templates/tutorials.

I started freelancing and started making some cash.

Landed my very first developer job. A dream at the time.

Then I quit it pretty fast. (story for another time)

More freelancing.

Started tutoring code privately 1-1 in person... then virtually.

Then created a youtube channel and started teaching code to thousands of people.

And here we are... You're now reading this.

You maybe wondering... what was different about it this time? How was I able to follow through? What clicked?

Honestly, it's probably a mixture of a lot of things.

Maybe I got lucky this time...

or I had to go through the many attempts before succeeding or getting lucky...

or I got sick of quitting on myself and went berserk

or the "failed attempts" before compounded and developed a new baseline knowledge of general understanding that tipped the scale and made it easier to follow through..

But gun to my head, if I had to boil it down to one thing. It would be...

focus.

And focus I did.. on one thing — Javascript.

Javascript > Front End Dev.

Not another language, tool, framework, library or another venture altogether.

And when I wanted to learn backend, again, what's closest to javascript? NodeJS.

Not python with flask or django, java, ruby with rails, or wasting time learning unnecessary garbage.

See, focus is an effort multiplier.

You can't magically study/work more hours. We all have the same 24 hours. And after sleep, food and basic necessities, we're left with about 12-14 hours with perfect execution.

And if you have a full-time job in an unrelated-field (gotta pay the bills), there goes another 8-10 hours with commute. (hopefully you're working remotely)

Now, if you have kids or other big responsibilities, you've got very little time.

And you have limited willpower and energy.

And if your limited resources even further spread out across BS, you'll get nowhere.

But if you focus on the right things, even with little resources, you chip away at it slowly, make meaningful progress and have compound growth later.

Common sense, I know.

But common sense is not common practice.

And this is what led me to create JabJabJavascript.

See, the biggest problem most people face in the beginning is that their focus is diluted across too many things.

They think they need to learn all these technologies and the latest cool javascript framework that's trending on social media.

Jquery, React, Underscore, D3, Lodash, Three, vue, svelte, Angular, backbone, next, meteor, gatsby...

See the problem?

Too many choices leads to analysis paralysis, decision fatigue and inaction.

Worse yet. You try one thing, then to the next, and to the next which ultimately leads to burnout. You only have so much willpower, energy, resilience...

See, people think it's about lacking motivation, discipline, or the "x" factor to make it through. I used to feel the same.

But you don't lack motivation or discipline.

You lack clarity and focus. And without that, you don't work on the things that matter.

Without that, you don't make meaningful progress.

And people quit when they don't see progress.

It doesn't mean you're quitter.

It means you're smart enough to know that it's sunk cost, and it's time to pivot.

So the big question is... where do you put your focus?

A question... What is the common denominator among all these?

Jquery, React, Underscore, D3, Lodash, Three, vue, svelte, Angular, backbone, next, meteor, gatsby...

That's right — it's Javascript behind the scenes.

So, if you focus on learning and understanding plain/vanilla Javascript deeply, you can pick up any JS library or framework with relative ease.

And libraries and frameworks change all the time. What's popular or trendy changes. As you're reading this, I bet you someone out there is creating the next big Javascript framework.

But the underlying language behind the frameworks, does not change except maybe for the syntactic sugar. The core principles and concepts are timeless.

And we can go further on this and argue that learning core CS principles is even a better use of time and energy but again, that's for another time.

And if you're in doubt, ask any veteran developer and they'll agree.

Okay, enough talk about the why. Wanna see what's inside the course?