01: Welcome to The Course

NOTE: I'm now doing Learn JavaScript the Hard Way Live Streams every Thursday @ 9pm EST (GMT-05) to develop the course further. You can come, watch me develop new exercises, and ask me questions or get live help.

Welcome to my Learn JavaScript the Hard Way course, and thank you for spending your hard earned money on my hard work. I hope you really enjoy the course and you get as much as possible out of it. If you find that something is missing, wrong, off, or not explained well, feel free to email me or talk to me in chat to ask for help. The forum is preferred if you have a question that might help someone else out later, but you can ask any way that works best for you.

The purpose of this first module is to get you started on the best possible footing with the material. I will introduce you to important tools, concepts, and strategies to make the most out of the course. I will attempt to give you good solid beginner information in the following topics:

1. How to use this website that I wrote by hand (as of 2022).
2. The goals of the course, and how to approach it as a beginner.
3. Time management strategies for studying in your spare time.
4. How to set up your computer for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
5. How to get help with problems you have.
6. Resources available to you on this course.
7. General warnings and common missteps.

I'm predicting that if you follow this initial "First Steps" module carefully that you'll be much better off if you had rushed into the course without any preparation. If you discover that I missed something you wanted me to cover before you started then please let me know.

How to Use This Website

The entire theme of this course is learning to create real world, full stack, small businesses in JavaScript. Part of the way I keep this course realistic is by letting you see the code to this very website. I am a working programmer who makes all of his own small businesses, and I'm effectively teaching you how to create your own business based on mine. At the end of the course you should be able to either build your own online business from scratch, or base your small business on my code.

The only problem with this setup is you have to put up with watching me make the sausage. I have to do a lot of gross grinding of JavaScripts to make this thing you're using, and because of that there might be bugs or User Interface weirdness. While this does teach you how to deal with these particular problems, it also means you might run into a few things that are not working or hard to figure out.

To help with this problem I've created this video that will walk through the learnjsthehardway.com website and show you how to use everything I've built up to that point in time. I'll also show you how to report a bug in the website so I can fix it. I will re-record this video for each major release of the software, and the video will mention which version on what date I'm using.

Please watch this video and take notes as best you can.