Getting started with jQuery and JavaScript

This week I started learning some jQuery and JavaScript. They're good skills to have and ones I can continue to expand upon once I know the basics. For me, the best way to learn is by doing. I decided I would design a memory game with cards that flipped over, related to the university of Michigan that we could potentially use to engage alumni at game-watchings. When you're new to something, I believe there is doing and doing. As I've mentioned before I'm still in my tutorial rage stage so I really didn't want to do another tutorial to build something in JavaScript.

I naively thought I could just build this memory game as I went. Well, I mapped out the game, figured out all the pieces and the different logic that needed to take place. Looking at all the parts, I realized that I had no idea where or how to start. So, I came up with a new plan. I started by watching some Treehouse videos. I actually kinda dislike watching tutorial videos but I’ve found that if I take notes at the same time, then I am able to absorb some of the information. So I watched a bunch of the Javascript series and a little bit of the jQuery series. I then searched for getting started with Javascript and same with getting started with jQuery and did some more reading. I also did some searching and reading on jQuery and Rails since I was building my game into a Rails application.

Once I felt like I understood some of the basics, I googled and searched in github for memory games using Javascript and jQuery. I did this when I started doing the Project Euler problems as well. For the first few, I really had no idea how to structure things or where to begin, so I would search the problems, find 4 or 5 different solutions, walk through each one to understand how different people solved it and take one of their approaches to move forward. I did the same thing with the memory game. Since it seem sot be a popular starter project for people learning Javascript, I looked over how 5 or 6 people put the game together, how many js files they built and how they structured the information. I walked through each thoroughly and then chose one to build my memory game off of and now I’m starting to customize it based on the foundation that I borrowed from someone else. If you’re curious about the foundation I used, check out this awesome memory game.