Welcome to my first post here on hashnode. You're about to read my review of the free JavaScript course on Scrimba (as a traumatized non programmer). More on that later.

As a visual artist, every creation starts off with a sketch.

As I delve into the world of coding (or do you guys say "programming" more often?) I feel horrendously out of place.

A white page where my wrist could roam free is now replaced by the endlessly numbered lines of the IDE. At some point, I'll probably be writing 1000 lines of code where previously a hundred (or more) photoshop layers was just another day in the world of design.

Moving on.

Using Scrimba was surprisingly simple. Actually, before I signed up, I found them on Free Code Camp's YouTube channel.

Eventually, retyping the code became a chore. So I signed up and finished the free JavaScript module. I then bit the bullet and bought their 6-month deal.

Note: The average time to complete was 5 months which, in my head, would incentivize me to finish before the time was up.

My first thoughts:

1. Wow. These guys found a way to teach inside the actual editor.
2. The teacher isn't boring.
3. I'm actually learning how to code.

By themselves, these revelations might not seem very... revelatory. Let me explain through a little backstory on how I first got introduced to programming.

After high school, my mom thought "You like computers so I think you should go to college for computer science and get a degree"

Me: "I literally Google everything"

A few months later, I'm sitting in a class experiencing the 9th dimension of hell hand-writing C++ code, a teacher that I didn't connect with and using computers that, even at the time, were begging to become E-Waste.

To nobody's surprise, I not only repeated my second year but failed and dropped out the second time around.

So much for "loving computers".

Fast forward a few years and here I am again trying to learn code to help out with the family business.

I guess necessity really is the mother of invention.

So how long did it take me to go through Scrimba's free JavaScript course?

This includes the time to watch the videos and do the challenges.

So if you've always wanted to learn code or think you're one of those people (like I thought) that just "can't learn code" I would say give Scrimba's free JavaScript course a try.

Who knows, it might be the classic issue of being exposed to programming in a negative way like I was.

Currently, I am working on finishing the Front End Developer Career Path. As you can see, I've made some good progress.

Let me be honest, there are many, many times the instructor told me to "go ahead and complete this challenge". I would think there'd be no way I would be able to do it on my own.

Que the surprised Pikachu face when completed it or did 90% of it.

Also, apparently, if you take things step by step and not try to rush you can write and build the code section by section. Who would have thought?

Again, if you've always wanted to dip your toes in learning to program, or you want to get up to speed in JavaScript in a smooth and simple learning environment, I would give Scrimba a shot.

Let me know how it goes.