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Oh, The Projects You'll Make!

Getting Started ยท Lesson 2 ยท


Over the next 4 weeks, you'll build four projects using JavaScript: A basic JavaScript app, a GIF Search Engine using the GIPHY API, a SoundCloud music player, and an app using Google Charts. Building these will teach you important concepts you need to know to not just be a decent JavaScript developer, but to be a decent developer in general, no matter the language you use.

Here's what we're going to learn: 

  1. How to make a Happy Hour App & Oprah (!), utilizing ten concepts of javascript like functions, arrays, and conditionals. 
  2. How to make a GIF Search Engine, taking advantage of things like APIs and AJAX.
  3. How to make a Soundcloud player, refining our knowledge of APIs, and getting into advanced functions and refactoring. 
  4. How to use Google Charts to make your own lightweight API. 

- Hey, so I've had a few questions about, you know,
what are we gonna learn in this course
because JavaScript is this big, enormous thing, right?
So, what parts of JavaScript are we gonna learn?
Now, if you're totally new to JavaScript,
I'll just say, we're gonna learn JavaScript.
That's what we're gonna do.
Enough, right?
But if you have learned a little bit, or if you've heard
a lot about all these different things out there,
I just want to show you the projects
and a list of some of the things we'll be learning
each week so you can just set expectations
and know what to expect.
So, really quickly, week one will be making
a happy hour app that will show you
where to have happy hour and who to have happy hour with,
as well as something called the Oprah app,
which I'll explain and show to you.
And in these projects, you will be learning
10 of the concepts of JavaScript and the cool thing
about this project is that these 10 concepts
are the same in so many other programming languages,
so in a way we're not only learning JavaScript,
we are learning, this will be valuable to you
in so many different ways.
So, I get really excited about this first week
because it's such a transferrable skill to have.
So, these are the 10 that we'll be going over.
Again, if this means nothing to you, doesn't matter,
just you could read these words aloud right now,
it's just good to hear them and evince comments,
but it doesn't matter if you don't know what they are yet.
Okay, week two.
We'll be making a gif-y search engine.
So we'll be searching, we'll make like a search engine,
we'll make this button and be able to search
and grab anything that we search for,
such as, if you want photos of cats,
it'll find you funny photos of cats.
That is what we will make.
So in this project, we'll be learning these list of things.
Again, if you've never heard of these things, no big deal,
but maybe if you've heard about AJAX or, I don't know,
APIs and stuff like that, you might wanna get
a little excited.
Or cats. You're like, I know about cats.
That's the prerequisite for this course
is that you've heard of cats.
(laughs)
If you've heard of cats, you're doing well.
If you haven't ...
So, week three, we will be making a SoundCloud player.
You know of SoundCloud, German company out of Berlin,
just 'cause I love Berlin, givin' a shout out there,
and this SoundCloud player allows you to take music
from the website soundcloud.com and we will
make like a little jukebox where we can grab the music
and make a playlist and play the embeds.
So, in this project, we will learn these things.
(laughs)
So, refactoring is something, appendChild is something,
I don't really wanna waste time explaining
what each of these are, but, again, you've seen it.
Okay, and finally,
(laughs)
this is fun, right?
Finally, in week four, this'll be the send off week,
the final week, like a final week of college,
I have to graduate you, if you do your homework
and send it in and part of that
will be getting your project live on Github.
We'll be look at Github Pages.
We will also look at using Google Spreadsheet data
to make our own API, essentially.
So, there's some ways that we can do that,
because in the first few weeks, we're relying on
already existing data, we're searching it,
we're pulling it.
Ah, in week four, you will make a data set, crazy!
And connect to it and that may sound,
you're like, really, I'm gonna do that?
Yeah, you're gonna do that, it's gonna be awesome
as long as you stick through the course week over week.
So, these are the projects we are creating.
I am super excited.
And I don't wanna overtalk it to death,
I wanna get right into making week one,
so let's continue with the course.