How I Am Navigating Learning JavaScript With Learning Disabilities

Using Jupyter Notebooks for taking JavaScript notes!

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

This is not my first rodeo attempting JavaScript (JS).

Way back in 2009, I entered graduate school at the University of South Florida.

In the first semester of my graduate program, I decided to enroll in a JavaScript course. The program required that you complete one programming language course. There were two options: Flash and JavaScript. Because I knew flash was on its way out, I picked JavaScript as my only viable option.

I despised JavaScript! We met for two hours once a week for 16 weeks. I nearly failed the course in the end. Somehow, I managed to pass the class!

I told myself I’d never learn another language!

13 years later, I find myself in a coding academy learning the MERN stack (Mongo, Express, React, Node) plus HTML/CSS/JS, forcing myself to grasp concepts.

I’d like to focus on JS and note-taking.

In JS, you can make single-line comments with //. For multiline comments, you use /* */

When I realized that I needed to go back and SLOW DOWN with learning JS, I decided that I needed to take my own notes. Yes, there are tons of notes already online, writing them in a way that I can understand helps me so much.

Screenshot of my VSCode JS notes file

I don’t know about you, but the above is not too appealing to the eye. Nothing stands out…

I have seen/heard about Jupyter Notebooks. I’ve always thought the concept was cool, mixing formatted text and code blocks w/ outputs!

Long story short I found a way to use Jypyter Notebooks within VSCode with JS!!

I’ll show you how:

Jupyter Notebook in VSCode

(Instructions are for mac)

1. Install iJavascript on your system using npm
2. Install the VSCode Python extension
3. Install the Python interpreter on your mac.
4. In VSCode, open the Command Palette, and search for Create: New Jupyter Notebook.

5. In the upper right hand portion of the window, you’ll see “Select Kernel”

6. Once you click that, the command palette will reopen, you’ll want to select the Javascript (node.js) kernel.

7. And that’s it! Use your new notebook to take functional notes!!

VSCode automatically creates a tree like table of contents for easy navigation

EXPORTING TO PDF (cannot be done in VSCode):

1. Make sure you save the file as a .ipynb file
2. In your terminal, enter jupyter notebook. That’ll run Python and Jupyter on your machine.
3. Locate and open the .ipynb in the browser

4. Select the file and then download as -> PDF

FINAL PDF form!