And that is fine. Your first ability to learn coding skills as I did, hangs on the next few steps. Take your time and get familiar with the syntax. With programming, The ABC's are summarized in work and thoughts that are processed before actually touching the code. They start with Define the Goal, then Design the Script by splitting complex problems into easy bits and flowcharts, and only finally, you could code each step!
Coding means bit manipulations, and Javascript (JS) manipulates html and css elements using arithmetic and boolean operators. These manipulations can only happen if you store this data somewhere, which is where variables (var) comes handy, JS has this unified expression to declare string, int and boolean making your life much easier. Multiple variables can be combines into Arrays such as var cars = ["Saab", "Volvo", "BMW"]; reducing code complexity writing multiple variables of a same type (cars) and which eventually will be used in Objects instead of arrays for ease of access to inner variables.
Functions however, adds more re-usability, since it can be executed with every single call. Also makes your code much readable with separate JS functions in each file, they can be seen as blocks with inputs and outputs. They are declared with function DoThis(){}; with input between (), code to execute between {} and a return value inside that to give you back a value at the declaration such as DoThis(); no matter where.
It was an apparent during a 1.5 hours test to measure some kind of competence in coding skills by the end of the 201 course, that these ABC steps were not defined and worked on as properly as it thought it were to the students. The code base, despite being a little over 160 lines of both JS and CSS, leave a little to be desired, as a metric. I had a barely finished working out the problems while doing it. There was something missing that I wish to explain in my learning journal, and here are some my points, ordered by when I learned them in that course.
The course was meant to familiarize us with the programming/coding & growth mindset, in addition to the literature that teaches necessary syntax for coding on web apps. It goes above and beyond to help each student on their issues during the course day, and hopefully foster teamwork and fix other problems afterwards. The latter was not emphasized enough as there was no attempt to build specific team structures, in addition to zoom breakout rooms which was already available, but had been assigned rather randomly and sometimes on each their own room, it helps immensely in skill transfer, or at least to get familiar with relevant skills.
Coding means bit manipulations, but it also means problem solving. This very skill have been attempted by each individual build some independent skills, but also has to be presented on to them in the first place, rather than to be lectured on. It would have been a major plus, if different approaches to how problems would be solved was presented in a personal matter to each member of this course before diving into team work.
These approaches vary from dividing JS problems to codeable bits to using the console to test variables and functions and even proper use of google search to check certain implementations of different solutions as I learned these approaches the hard way, and failing multiple times before getting a function right after multiple days of trial and error along with zero understanding of what it really did.
It's time to bring that pickaxe and get some work done