My Book To Help Kids Learn To Code in JavaScript

I started to learn how to code when I was in 5th grade. I took my first course in BASIC then. It was the most fun I’d had. Yes, I’m a nerd. This was in 1989. Now, 30 years later, my son is about the age I started to learn code. And it baffles me that despite the advances we have made in 30 years and our reliance on technology, programming is not a default part of school curriculum. Learning code these days is easy. There are so many tools available like Scratch and online courses like at code.org where even kids younger than 10 can start to learn how to code. There are toys like Lego Mindstorms that help kids learn to think logically.

However, there are not many books that teach “real” code once you get beyond those things. Something that you can use in real life to make websites, applications and games with an actual programming language that you can use professionally. As someone who has been writing code since childhood, studied Computer Science and working in the industry for nearly 20 years, I’ve decided to write a book to teach kids how to code in JavaScript. The book is based on my experiences teaching my son. A lot of my strategies did not work or were difficult to understand for a 10 year old. As my son got frustrated, I tried different options and techniques until we found what worked. The book is ahead of where I am with my son so things will change as we get to come of those concepts.

JavaScript is selected as the language because that is the only language that can do it all, code that runs in the browser, on the desktop, on servers and on mobile phones. Only very basic language features that are the easy to understand are used to keep things simple. Every chapter in the book will build out bits and pieces that will eventually become a card game.

The book is still a work in progress and the game itself is also a work in progress and is available here for you to check it out. It only works in modern browsers like Chrome and Firefox. Internet Explorer is not supported because the code uses modern language features not supported in Internet Explorer.

All the code from the book is available here: https://github.com/sgd2z/elementary-javascript
The book can be read here while it is a work in progress: https://1drv.ms/w/s!AlY6sDe0MB8sg6E82V5FNQ70L8ljZw

The Game: https://s1dd.com/BookPokemonGame/