Now that you’ve read this book, the available online courses and tutorials should be
very easy for you. If you still feel that you’re missing some basic pieces, or just want to
practice the fundamentals, I recommend the following:
•
Lynda.com JavaScript tutorials
•
•
Codecademy’s JavaScript course
•
Microsoft Virtual Academy’s intro course on JavaScript
Script on Windows, I recommend this for the material on using Visual Studio for
JavaScript development
Stack Overflow
Chances are good that you’ve already used Stack Overflow (SO); since its inception in
2008, it has become the dominant online Q&A site for programmers, and it is your
best resource to get your JavaScript questions answered (and any other technology
covered in this book). Stack Overflow is a community-maintained, reputation-based
Q&A site. The reputation model is what’s responsible for the quality of the site and its
continued success. Users can gain reputation by having their questions or answers
“upvoted” or having an accepted answer. You don’t have to have any reputation to ask
a question, and registration is free. However, there are things you can do to increase
the chances of getting your question answered in a useful manner, which we’ll discuss
in this section.
Reputation is the currency of Stack Overflow, and while there are people out there
who genuinely want to help you, it’s the chance to gain reputation that’s the icing on
the cake that motivates good answers. There are a lot of really smart people on SO,
and they’re all competing to provide the first and/or best correct answer to your ques‐
tion (there’s a strong disincentive to provide a quick but bad answer, thankfully). Here
are things you can do to increase the chances of getting a good answer for your ques‐
tion:
Be an informed SO user
Take the
“How do I ask a good question?”
inclined, you can go on to read all of the
—you’ll earn a
badge if you read it all!
Don’t ask questions that have already been answered
Do your due diligence, and try to find out if someone has already asked your
question. If you ask a question that has an easily found answer already on SO,
your question will quickly be closed as a duplicate, and people will often down‐
vote you for this, negatively affecting your reputation.
Stack Overflow | 313
