Learning JavaScript

I want to properly learn JavaScript to improve my front-end developer skills. I’ve been using HTML and CSS for over a decade with my themes and my websites, but I feel like JavaScript is the missing piece of the puzzle.

Nowadays there is no need to buy a book if the aim is to learn computer-related things. Tutorials are plentiful online and there are many online courses. I have looked through a couple of them, like Codacademy, Code Institute, Coursera, DataCamp, and most recently, Pluralsight.

Pluralsight offers a 10-day trial (with a maximum of 300 minutes). Considering most Javascript courses are 3-4 h long it’s enough to finish one course and figure out if the 35$ per month subsciption is worth it. I figured that I would be able to finish the course within a month if I started, but before paying up I wanted the trial. So, yesterday I set up my account and started on the JavaScript Fundamentals course. However, before getting very far I realized I was lacking a LOT of pre-requisites. The first thing to do was to install Node.js. Then Visual Studio. Then connect it with Git, which wasn’t very straight-forward. The platform used in the video is Mac OSX while I’m using a Windows 10. Needless to say, I didn’t get very far yesterday. All the time was used to install and set up all the software I’ll be using.

Today I was thinking of making a second attempt at actually learning JavaScript. However, perhaps it would be better to learn Node.js before I continue on this adventure. I had always thought that I should learn JavaScript first and then Node.js, Angular, React, and Vue.js, but perhaps the way to go would be to learn them all simulataneously as I go, on a need-to-know basis?