I had a similarly frustrating experience when I first set up Python to use Django. The complete mess that is the Python 2/3 split (thankfully somewhat better now after many years), trying to figure out what the hell pip and pipenv were (this was before I was familiar with package management).
However, I initially learned some Python in university and I liked it then. We just installed Idle and ran some simple scripts, and everything worked. That's the right way to learn a language. If you dive straight into JS package management, you are attempting to learn multiple things at the same time:
* Node.js environment
* Browser environment
* JavaScript syntax
* 'running a localhost'
* JavaScript modules
* NPM package management
You need to tackle these one by one. If you do them all at once, even with prior experience in other languages, of course you're gonna have a bad time.
Really what I take away from this post is that the author is a bad teacher, although the experience of her student is probably similar to what many people experience when trying to learn by themselves.
There are many improvements that could be made to the JS ecosystem, but this post does not do the current state justice. What it highlights, if anything, is a problem with the available of a standardized learning path. But I'm not sure what the solution to that would be.
However, I initially learned some Python in university and I liked it then. We just installed Idle and ran some simple scripts, and everything worked. That's the right way to learn a language. If you dive straight into JS package management, you are attempting to learn multiple things at the same time:
* Node.js environment
* Browser environment
* JavaScript syntax
* 'running a localhost'
* JavaScript modules
* NPM package management
You need to tackle these one by one. If you do them all at once, even with prior experience in other languages, of course you're gonna have a bad time.
Really what I take away from this post is that the author is a bad teacher, although the experience of her student is probably similar to what many people experience when trying to learn by themselves.
There are many improvements that could be made to the JS ecosystem, but this post does not do the current state justice. What it highlights, if anything, is a problem with the available of a standardized learning path. But I'm not sure what the solution to that would be.