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README.md

Section 2 - GROWTH MINDSET, Conditionals and Functions

Section 2 is estimated to take a total of 6-8 hours to complete. Similar to Section 1, this section of the project involves reading (both from this document as well as the 📒John Duckett book), 👨🏽‍💻exercises, and 📝reflection questions. Make sure to manage your time well so that should you get stuck and need help, you have plenty of time to do so and meet the deadline.

Vocabulary

This section will introduce a number of new terms, that may feel a bit more complex. Write these terms and reserved keywords in that special spot in your notebook now. Work to hold yourself accountable to updating definitions as you work through this section.

Vocabulary Terms

  • comparison operators
  • logical operators
  • condition
  • conditionals
  • if statements

JavaScript Reserved Keywords

  • if
  • else if
  • else

Get Set Up

Using the Terminal, open the local copy of the repository that you created during setup. To do this, you will need to use the terminal command cd to change into the directory that holds the repository. Once you are in the correct directory, use the terminal command atom . to open the project repository. If you are having trouble with this, see the section1 instructions.

Part A: Growth Mindset

Read/watch one or both of the following:

  • This 2-part blog post series discusses how having a growth mindset is helpful when learning to code, and how coding promotes a growth mindset!
  • This video interview where an experienced Front End engineer discusses learning about the concept of Growth Mindset and how that's changed how she sees her work and career. (The first 7 minutes are intros and a discussion on Developer Relations. After that, the conversation about Growth Midnset begins.)

Then, consider on the following questions. We will ask you to share some of these responses at the end of this section.

  • What are two points from the article or video that either resonated with you, or were brand new to you?
  • In which ways do you currently demonstrate a Growth Mindset? In which ways do you not?
  • What is something you are good at or knowledgeable at now, that you once weren't? How did you get those skills/knowledge? Was it hard at some point?

Part B: Conditionals

One of the most important concepts in programming is knowing when and how to tell the computer to do either one thing or another thing based on a set of simple criteria. We can accomplish this with if statements, which you will learn about in this section.

When you are all done with the lessons, exercises, and reflection for this section, you will once again use Git to save your work, and then put it in the cloud on GitHub.

Operators

When you learned about Booleans in Section 1, you briefly read about and practiced using some comparison operators.

The conditional operators we touched on earlier are critical in the set up of if statements. Conditional statements (conditions) evaluate to true or false. The most common operators used for conditions are comparison operators:

  • === (strictly equal)
  • !== (not equal)
  • > (greater than)
  • >= (greater than or equal to)
  • < (less than)
  • <= (less than or equal to)

Some data types also have functions which return a true or false, so they’re used in conditional statements. We will touch on those later in the project and when you get into Mod 1.

👨🏽‍💻 PAUSE here, and complete the exercises in comparisons.js

If Statements

📒 Read pages 148-149 and 160-163 from the JAVASCRIPT & JQUERY: Interactive Front-End Web Development book. If you are unsure of some vocabulary you encounter, refer to the vocabulary list at the end of this README.

In addition to if and else, else if can help us create more complex statements. else if statements execute a block of code when their condition evaluates to true. However, they must be chained to a previous if statement, like so:

if (condition1) {
    //block of code executes if condition1 evaluates to true
} else if (condition2) {
    //block of code executes if condition1 evaluates to false and condition2 evaluates to true.
} else if (condition3) {
    //block of code executes if condition1 and condition2 evaluate to false
    //and condition3 evaluates to true.
} else {
    //block of code executes if none of the conditions above evaluate to true.
};

If/Else Statements

Why do we have conditional statements? Most often it’s to control conditional instructions, especially if/else if/else structures. Read the following code snippet, then the accompanying explanation that follows it.

var minutesToHeatWater = 7;

if (minutesToHeatWater < 7) {
    console.log("The water is not boiling yet.");
} else if (minutesToHeatWater === 7) {
    console.log("It's just barely boiling");
} else if (minutesToHeatWater === 8) {
    console.log("It's boiling!");
} else {
    console.log("Hot! Hot! Hot!");
};

What would be logged when minutesToHeatWater is 7? What if we changed it to 5? Or 8? Or 9?

  • When the minutesToHeatWater is 5, here is how the execution goes: "Is it true that 5 is less than 7? Yes, it is, so print out the line The water is not boiling yet.".
  • When the minutesToHeatWater is 7, it goes like this: "Is it true that 7 is less than 7? No. Next, is it true that 7 is equal to 7? Yes, it is, so print out the line It's just barely boiling".
  • When the minutesToHeatWater is 8, it goes like this: "Is it true that 8 is less than 7? No. Next, is it true that 8 is equal to 7? No. Next, is it true that 8 is equal to 8? Yes, it is, so print out the line It's boiling!".
  • Lastly, when minutesToHeatWater is 9 or greater, it goes: "Is it true that 9 is less than 7? No. Next, is it true that 9 is equal to 7? No. Next, is it true that 9 is equal to 8? No. Since none of those are true, execute the else and print the line Hot! Hot! Hot!".

Only one section of the if/else if/else structure can have its instructions run. If the if is true, for instance, JavaScript will not bother to look at the else if or else. Once one block executes, that’s it.

Equality vs. Assignment

The number one mistake people encounter when writing conditional statements is the difference between = and ===.

  • = is an assignment. It means "take the value on the right side and store it into whatever is on the left side" – it’s telling, not asking.

  • === is a question. It means "is the value on the right the exact same as the value on the left?" – it’s asking, not telling.

👨🏽 ‍💻PAUSE here, and complete the exercises in decision-making.js and if-statements.js

Reflections

📝 Answer the prompts in the reflection.md file in the section2 directory. If you need a reminder on how to format your markdown, this is the Markdown Cheatsheet!

Commit Your Work in Git

When you are finished with all of the section2 activities, use the Terminal to run the following commands in order to save your work to your local Git repository.

  1. git add section2/exercises
  2. git add section2/reflection.md
  3. git status - you should see only green filenames - if you see any that are red, continue to git add those files until git status shows all green files.
  4. git commit -m "Add Section 2 work"

Push to GitHub

You've saved your work to Git on your local machine, but your repository on GitHub doesn't reflect it yet. You update the remote GitHub repository with your new local commits when you push your changes.

Run:

git push origin main

You should now be able to log in to GitHub, navigate to your remote project repository and see all the work you did in this section!

Vocabulary From Book

The readings in the JAVASCRIPT & JQUERY: Interactive Front-End Web Development book use JavaScript in a way that is likely unfamiliar to you. The book uses specific JavaScript properties and functions to interact with HTML elements on a webpage, like changing or adding text on a webpage. Initially, we will be using JavaScript without HTML. That's why you haven't seen these techniques before! We will address these techniques thoroughly during Mod 1, however, here are some quick definitions to help you become familiar with them.

  • document.getElementById(): a method used to retrieve an element from a web page. Here is the MDN documentation
  • document.write(): a method used to write data to a webpage. Here is the MDN documentation
  • el.innerHTML(): a method used to change the text of an element (defined as the variable el) from a web page. Here is the MDN documentation
  • el.textContent(): a method used to change the text of an element (defined as the variable el) from a web page. Here is the MDN documentation

🚀 Go to Section 3