I enjoyed my Codecademy experience in learning JavaScript, but especially toward the end, I felt like I was having to look up things constantly. I posted a query on their forums and got a very nice response back from one of the mods explaining that this was perfectly normal. He suggested retaking the course to help cement the new concepts and haunting the Q & A forums for more info. In the meantime, I found something else.
Interestingly enough, I found out in one of the Codecademy Q & A's about a site called JavaScript.is (Sexy). It sounds like a silly name, but I think it's actually going to be the solution to my situation. They have an eight week tutorial that I just began titled How to Learn JavaScript Properly.
There's a textbook involved, and they recommend a related reddit study group, signing up for Stack Overflow and, interestingly enough, using Codecademy for practice.
You can click the link I provided to see all of the requirements for the class, but I like the organization and structure involved. It also provides me with the format for repeating the Codecademy JavaScript course as well as adding more content via the other class elements.
Since this is a work requirement, I need to stick with it and I guess that's the secret, especially for people like me who aren't "natural" programmers. I write in English everyday for a variety of purposes, professional, semi-professional, and personal, so I have plenty of practice in that arena. If I did the same with JavaScript, even though I find it less intuitive than my native written and spoken language, I can only imagine that coding in JavaScript will get a little bit easier.
I haven't forgotten HTML5 and CSS3, but I'm not sure combining that with JavaScript in the same learning effort is going to be effective. I may need a different plan for that learning path. Right now, in addition to my professional and personal life, I'm focusing on this plan.
Wish me luck.
I'll be back at some point to let you know how things are panning out.
