Feeling Discouraged on ES6 section

JavaScript
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So, I don’t want to indulge in a pity-party of 1, but does anyone feel like they just aren’t getting it on these JS exercises?

I mean, HTML and CSS make so much sense, but now I’m on to JS and I’m getting a little discouraged.

I felt like I was getting the basics until this ES6 section – now it’s like I have no idea what I’m doing. Every exercise takes at least 40 minutes of me spinning my wheels, and then out of frustration I just find out what the answer is by googling it.

That worked for a couple of exercises because I was at least able to see the solution and understand the code. Now I find myself unable to even understand the solution.

I guess I’m just wondering if anyone else is experiencing this and if it’s worth it for me to continue.

I don’t want to be some stereotypical developer that just copies and pastes code not knowing what it does or why I’m doing it, but I legit feel like I’m just not able to keep up with the exercises.

Advice?

3 Likes
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Maybe after each challenge, if you feel you have not grasped the concept, hit the help button and seek advice and understanding. Or just keep posting to this post, doesn’t matter. Ask your questions if you can’t find a satisfactory google answer. There are a few members that are more than willing to lend a hand.

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You are not the only one in here. I have some background with Javascript 5. But ES6 on this sections is just a lot of concepts that my brain cannot grasp easily. I mean that jump from one thing to another. The examples given sometimes don’t even make sense. They actually throw the use of functions like map(), reduce(), filter() to a user that is barely understanding the basic of the JS language. I think our best bet is to google and use the MDM Documentation.

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Well I felt the same too when I first start that unit, but if you understand ES5 well, you can use that in the later challenges after the ES6 part. Actually I started to understand ES6 better after I finish the back-end part, but I would still prefer to use a for loop instead of .map() method…

If you are stuck in any challenge or need further explanation, you can always ask for help in the forum.
Good Luck!

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Yeah that’s probably the only thing missing with this format - some sort of mentor or teaching that knows how to help others through roadblocks.

I was thinking about this and I guess this is kind of what you sign up for, you know? It’s not like I’m taking a college course with all of this background in CS. It’s like, “Here’s the info, you’ll figure it out or you won’t”. So I guess I’m just being lame.

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I can definitely tell you that it took me way more than 40 minutes for each exercise in ES6 section. When I realized I was stuck I started reading You Don’t Know JavaScript series (first 3 books) and other articles. I didn’t want to google any solutions. And only after that I was able to finish ES6 section (except ‘Create Strings Using Template Literals’ which as far as I remember had a bug in it) all by myself. So just keep trying.

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Hmm, kinda but not really. Do the functional JS and OO JS sections first - afaik most of the challenges in those were built up over a much longer period of time, and are more polished, and build on one another. The ES6 section is newer and hasn’t really had that time to bed in and have the kinks worked out. For example, stuff like map, filter etc. are explained over a series of challenges in the functional programming section. If you do those sections first then the ES6 section should make more sense - like the map one, it becomes more like “this is a more compact syntax to write the callback” rather than “here are some functions and paradigms you won’t have encountered, oh and they use completely different syntax”. You get one concept at a time that way rather than a big dump of concepts.

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Haha thats me a few days ago, im still strugling to understand it and it might take quite some time for me to get it fully. ES6 section challanges is the hardest one yet i faced and most of the time I just don’t understand the questions.
Still keep on trying man

1 Like
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I think I’ll give that a shot actually

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Hi,

I felt the same. I am skipping the ES6 for now. Once done with basic Data structures and OOP section I will come back to it. I guess it will make much more sense.

ES6 introduced a lot of programmer friendly stuff for writing clean code and I guess they wanted us to get into that syntax and habit early on… and hence put that section ahead.

2 Likes
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That definitely makes sense, and if in the end goal is to prepare people for a professional position somewhere, saying that your proficient in JavaScript is probably synonymous with “I know ES6”

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You’re definitely not the only one. I got stuck on the Golf Code challenge just now! The concept was pretty simple but I don’t know golf so I was all what-the-heck from the start and ended up overcomplicating it. I ended up looking at the solution very briefly and then was able to write it on my own.

I see it this way, if it takes you 2 minutes or 40 minutes, you still completed it. :slight_smile:

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Let me tell you this, the ES6 section is not very well structured, it’s definitely not beginner friendly, so if you are new to JavaScript it’s just natural to feel lost in this section. You should probably look at other resources while going through this section, I remember the lesson about higher order functions was particularly bad. There’s no way that someone who’s never seen map or filter before can understand these concepts with the lesson’s example.

So my advice, when you go through the JS curriculum (not only the ES6 section) and there’s something you don’t fully understand, just google a tutorial for that specific concept, there are plenty of resources out there, then you come back and things will make more sense. The FCC JS curriculum has helped me improve a lot and I’m already starting to think as a programmer thanks to it (especially to the algorithm section), I think it’s amazing. However when I started going through the JS curriculum I already had some experience using JS by building a few projects after a lot of struggle, because I didn’t know JS (I thought I knew), but I think me going through that struggle was the key to finally being able to understand concepts like functions, arrays, objects, etc, and how things come together.

You said that you were keeping up before the ES6 section, which means that you understood the rest, right? Well ES6 is not very different to ES5 and believe me, the biggest difference is probably arrow functions and let and const to declare a variable. So if you truly understand functions, for example, you shouldn’t have problems understanding arrow functions.

JS can be hard and even harder when you try to figure out how a function or an array is going to be any helpful with your HTML, I know this was very tough for me to overcome as I am a very visual type of person. I mean, I knew how to declare a function, what an array was and how to access to the elements in it, but I just couldn’t visualize how any of that worked with the HTML, until I finally started building things.

Sorry for the long post, by the way, if you have questions about JS please don’t hesitate to ask for help, I’d gladly help you with this journey. In fact, I think it should be good for me trying to explain things to someone else, I’m also still learning and explaining things to other is a great way to learn.

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this is super helpful, thanks! I have been struggling too, like Brofest and definitely felt like pieces were missing between the basics and ES6

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Hey guys!

I think for those like me, definitely going through the other learning modules was super helpful. I still struggled through the remainder of ES6, but it was more understandable - which is probably as good as it will get until I start using this in a project.

Also, I recommend the Data Structures and Algorithms section if you are struggling with some of the general concepts and syntax you encounter in that section.

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Thanks for the tip, Bro. Was struggling too.

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is there still a bug in this one? I’m at this one right now and it keeps telling me that resultDisplayArray is the desired output
and I’m fairly sure the code is correct…

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Thanks for this post. I was really getting into the course up until I hit the ES6 section. The problem is that the lesson and explanation on the left does not prepare a new person for any sensible answer. I might as well read a blog about dogs and then try to do the exercises. I will take your advice and go thru Tutorialspoint ES6 section and then come back. Hopefully, this is the only non-explanatory section. Looking at the other posts, many other areas are great after this one.

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I felt the same way so turned to YouTube for a little help:

and this

Also on the FCC channel, Beau has created his own JS video that includes all the es6 section but I would avoid until you have completed the es6 section on FCC path, use it to solidify your learning.

Chin up, keep going, keep coding!

:slight_smile:

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I was feeling the same way , but I promised myself I won’t google any java script solution , I found " https://laracasts.com/series/es6-cliffsnotes/episodes" you should give it a try .