1. Practice the concepts

1. Prep exercises

1. Practice practice practice

In this section you will be doing interactive exercises, that will allow you to practice with the concepts you've learned about this week! We provide a lot of possible exercises here and you probably can't do everything, but do as many as you need to feel comfortable with the concepts. Also feel free to come back to them later.

- Do all parts of [Codecademy: Arrays](https://www.codecademy.com/courses/introduction-to-javascript/lessons/arrays) (Signup required!)

- Do 5 exercises of [FreeCodeCamp: Basic data structures](https://learn.freecodecamp.org/javascript-algorithms-and-data-structures/basic-data-structures)

- [Codecademy: Functions ](https://www.codecademy.com/courses/introduction-to-javascript/lessons/functions)

- [JSchallenger](https://www.jschallenger.com/) - Do all of the Javascript Basics section except for `scope` and `asynchronous javascript`.

- There is a practice-exercises folder in this week's repository that is filled with exercises to try out. The solutions are in a separate folder so you can check if you did it correctly. Clone this repository to your computer and have a go!

Inside your `JavaScript` fork, go to the folder `Week2`. Inside of that folder, navigate to `/prep-exercises`. For each exercise, you will find a separate folder. The `README` explains what needs to be done. There will also be some questions at the bottom to think about. Go through them _before_ the session on Sunday as it will be covered then.

Done with the above? Then it is time to practice practice practice! Below you will find huge lists of practice exercises to keep practicing. The better you get at JavaScript, the easier the rest of the curriculum is so try to do as much as you can. Some of these solutions use some of the concepts of next week so if something looks weird, have a quick look at next week's topics to see what it means:

There are also multiple websites that provide constant challenges to practice your skills. These go from beginner to advanced and you should bookmark them and return every once in awhile. In some interview processes these kinds of exercises are given nowadays. We suggest to start with Edabit as they are more geared to beginners, the others start at a higher level:

- [Edabit](https://edabit.com/challenges) - You can choose JavaScript as a language and then try solving as many challenges as you can. If you find the level too easy then you can choose a higher difficulty.

- [leetcode](https://leetcode.com/) - Sign up and start solving!

- [Code Wars](https://www.codewars.com/) - Once you feel comfortable with the JavaScript syntax sign up for code wars to practice. It is a website where you can solve exercises and rank up! When signing up, only choose JavaScript to really focus the problems on learning to solve problems in it. You can later change it to other technologies when you get more familiar.

For the first week of JavaScript there is no homework to hand in as the exercises already give you all the feedback you need.

Try to do more exercises in the links above. The first weeks of the JavaScript modules are very important as understanding the basics will make the rest of the curriculum that much easier to follow. So keep reading and writing code!

The first week of JavaScript we do not have homework and we encourage students to follow all the material at their own pace. So students can ask questions about any week. Expect questions about:

These are the topics for week 1:

1. [Refresher on JavaScript building blocks](https://github.com/HackYourFuture/explore/tree/main/Week3)

- Variables

- Values

- Statements / Expressions

- Operators

- Conditional Statements

- [Functions](https://study.hackyourfuture.net/#/javascript/functions)

1. [Refresher on debuggers](https://study.hackyourfuture.net/#/tools/debuggers)

1. [Loops](https://study.hackyourfuture.net/#/javascript/loops)

1. [Naming conventions](https://study.hackyourfuture.net/#/programming/naming-conventions)

1. [Testing code](https://www.ministryoftesting.com/articles/e463d4ba?s_id=14519957)

All of the detailed information about every concept is in your study book. The following goal explanation will link you to the correct place to get studying. Read through the goal description once to get an idea of what you will be learning, then go through the different links and look at them in detail.

Welcome to week 1 of JavaScript! Time to get coding, let's start with refreshing the things we learned during the explore module. Have a look at [week 3](https://github.com/HackYourFuture/explore/tree/main/Week3) there again to remind yourself what the following concepts mean again:

- Variables

- Values

- Statements / Expressions

- Operators

- Conditional Statements

Then have a look at functions again over [here](https://study.hackyourfuture.net/#/javascript/functions).

This week we are going to go a little deeper and get some extra building blocks to work with. Another cool thing we can do in JavaScript is repeat actions, we can do that using a concept called loops, read more about that [here](https://study.hackyourfuture.net/#/javascript/loops).

You now have all of the basic building blocks that form the basis of all code! You will undoubtedly already have encountered the difficulty of reading code, and combining everything this week will make it even more difficult to follow. It is a good idea to revisit the debugger section with this new knowledge [here](https://study.hackyourfuture.net/#/tools/debuggers). Although it is called debugging, a lot of the process of finding 'bugs' in your code is trying to understand what is happening in the code. So keep using the debugger to understand pieces of code that you are not 100% comfortable with yet!

This is also the week we are going to start learning about best practices surrounding programming. These are general rules programmers follow so that code remains readable for others. The first will be about naming conventions, read more about that [here](https://study.hackyourfuture.net/#/programming/naming-conventions) and try to make it a habit to follow them.

Lastly we want to introduce the first steps to testing code. Let's first have a look at what software testing is and why we do it [here](https://www.ministryoftesting.com/articles/e463d4ba?s_id=14519957). The simplest form of testing is using assertions, have a look what that is [here](https://study.hackyourfuture.net/#/testing/assertion), we will introduce this more in your homework so you will see how it works.

Are you finished with going through the materials? You're doing great! If you feel ready to get practical, click [here](./MAKEME.md).