A few designer friends over at Automattic gathered up to take the JavaScript30 class by Wes Bos (check it out, it’s free!). Thought I should join them. I’ve been itching to take on some modern JS class but never gathered the will/patience/time to do it. This one seems like a sweet deal so, I signed up!

To make the commitment a little more, well, official, I decided to document my findings throughout the courses so, here I am!

First course was about wiring up a Drum Kit in JS. Starter files had the HTML+CSS ready and I just needed to add the JS6 code. Every time a key is hit, the drum kit will play the corresponding sound (say clap, hihat, kick, etc) while doing a small animation of the key on-screen to show which one got hit. Neat!

So, here’s what I learned from the first course called Drum Kit:

• data- attributes
• attribute selectors
• classList add/remove/toggle!
• arrow function (=>)
• listening for the transitionend event

It’s been some time since I tinkered with JavaScript and it’s clear that the language has really evolved with JS6. Makes it taking the next courses even more interesting. I’ll let you know!