Review

Learning programming doesn’t have to be a complex and overwhelming process. There are just a few basic concepts you need to wrap your head around.

These act like building blocks. To build a tall tower, you start first by putting block on top of block on top of block. The same goes with programming. Here are some of the essential programming building blocks:

• You need operators to perform actions on values.
• You need values and types to perform different kinds of actions like math on numbers or output with strings.
• You need variables to store data (aka state) during your program’s execution.
• You need conditionals like if statements to make decisions.
• You need loops to repeat tasks until a condition stops being true.
• You need functions to organize your code into logical and reusable chunks.

Code comments are one effective way to write more readable code, which makes your program easier to understand, maintain, and fix later if there are problems.

Finally, don’t neglect the power of practice. The best way to learn how to write code is to write code.

I’m excited you’re well on your way to learning how to code, now! Keep it up. Don’t forget to check out other beginner programming resources (books, blogs, online training, etc.). This chapter and this book are a great start, but they’re just a brief introduction.

The next chapter will review many of the concepts from this chapter, but from a more JavaScript-specific perspective, which will highlight most of the major topics that are addressed in deeper detail throughout the rest of the series.