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📓 Documentation and Resources

JavaScript has been around for many years and there are many places for documentation and help online. Be wary of the resources you find online. There is a lot of bad information out there, especially on JavaScript. There are also many conflicting opinions about ways to accomplish the same task.

Here are the primary sources we suggest for documentation and reference. If they seem overwhelming at first, don't be deterred. As your knowledge and ability grow, so too will your ability to navigate the documentation and resources.

Mozilla Developer Network (MDN)​

MDN is one of the best sources of documentation on JavaScript. The site includes guides, tutorials, reference, tools and resources for developers using JavaScript. To help empower you to use this resource, we have lessons throughout this course section that go into depth about navigating MDN, how to read documentation, and helpful features to know about.

Stack Overflow​

Stack Overflow is a good resource for finding answers to specific challenges that you are facing. It's a site for asking and answering questions about programming. You need to be careful about what you find there, as there is plenty of bad information to go along with the good. Make sure to search to see if somebody has already answered your question before posting. And double-check that any posts you're referencing are fairly recent (technology changes quickly!). Also, give back by answering questions for other people!

Search Engine​

Finally, if you're stuck on something, chances are, somebody has gotten stuck on it, too — try a search engine. To make sure you get up-to-date results, limit your results to the past year. In Google: click Search tools in the bar above your search results, and then change All time to Past year. It's helpful when searching to add the language to your search so you don't find yourself weeding through results for other languages. Here are two example search queries:

  • "converting a string to a number JavaScript"
  • "creating a link HTML"