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Welcome to Running JavaScript

You already know Python. This course gets JavaScript running on your computer, and starts you on the ways JavaScript does things differently. Here’s a first taste: one line of a setup-check script, with platfrom typed instead of platform. First in Python:

Language: Python
print("OS:", sys.platfrom)

Python stops with an AttributeError and asks whether you meant .platform. Here’s the same slip in a JavaScript port of the script:

Language: JavaScript
console.log("OS:", process.platfrom);

When you run it, it prints its report without an error:

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00:01 Welcome to Getting Started With JavaScript for Pythonistas! You already know Python. This course gets JavaScript running on your computer, and starts you on the ways JavaScript does things differently.

00:13 Your project is a small product team’s setup check, the script their new developers run on their first morning, and you’ll port it to JavaScript. Here’s a first taste.

00:25 Here’s a Python setup check. Say you mistype one name: platfrom instead of platform. Python stops, with a hint at the fix.

00:37 Here’s the JavaScript port, with the same slip. It runs to the end, and prints undefined where the operating system should be. That’s JavaScript’s way of saying there’s no value there, and you’ll get to know it well in this course.

00:52 No error. Why? And how would you have spotted it? This course answers both. JavaScript can look a lot like Python, but it has its own rules, and they change what happens when something goes wrong.

01:10 JavaScript runs in every browser and in several runtimes. This course uses Node, a common way to run JavaScript outside the browser. The team’s new developers run this check on their first morning.

01:24 It prints their version, operating system, and folder, then the next steps. The team is moving to Node, so you’ll port it, one piece at a time.

01:36 By the end, you’ll install Node and try its REPL, run a script, make it a project, and read its errors, even the quiet ones. Then the project rebuilds the whole setup check.

01:50 To start, you only need to know how to run a Python script and use Python’s REPL. You don’t need to know any JavaScript yet, and you don’t need Node: the next lesson installs it.

02:03 Short videos like this one mix with text lessons and exercises, and every video has a summary below it. A project puts it together, and a quiz and a summary close the course.

02:16 Next up is Installing Node, a text lesson.

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