There are dozens of reasons why learning JavaScript is a great idea, but most tutorials fall into a classic trap: they expect the user to adapt to the content, when it should be the other way around. Either they present technical information too quickly, or they lack the basic explanations that demand extra material and secondary searches. Jeremy Thomas’s course aims to change that with a very simple premise: teach the essentials of JavaScript in just 14 minutes.
When learning a programming language we can consider multiple factors, but if we go by a simple question of popularity, JavaScript is one of the ones at the top of the list, and one of the most requested in the general market. The good news is that the amount of free resources available is gigantic. The bad news is that these resources are not assimilated overnight. The hours of flight that JavaScript demands (and basically all languages, to be honest) are not few, and if there is something that is scarce these days, it is time.
What you’ll cover in 14 minutes
So why not start with the essentials of JavaScript? Jeremy Thomas’s tutorial won’t magically turn you into a programmer, but it will serve as a starting point, and the best part is that it takes 14 minutes. Nor does it require additional software: Your "development environment" will be none other than the console built into the main browsers. The first exercise explores the concept of functions, and how they work exactly (that is, why they require parentheses and quotes). Then it moves on to objects (here the content gets a bit denser), and that leads us to variables and conditionals.
Now, this basic course is fast and comfortable (since it allows us to pause and continue later from the last point), but that doesn’t make it perfect. The first barrier that all interested parties must cross is the language. The content is only available in English, and even though JavaScript’s own structure is based on that language, we know it can be a little more complicated for some people.
