Learning new things: Don't beat your head against a wall.

I think I've been going about this all wrong.

I've been trying to "master all the JavaScripts" since I decided to become a web designer in 2008. Since then, my job description has changed, but my JS mastery progress has been minimal. Everyone else seemed to "get" JavaScript while I was stuck in second gear with jQuery. Over and over, "JavaScript the Good Parts" and "Eloquent JavaScript" were tossed my way with "it worked for me, so it's the best advice I can give you" gestures. But the words in the books didn't make sense to me. They were written for people who had been programming with other languages, using terms I didn't know, explaining programming quirks I could not appreciate (as a recently defecting cartoonist, I was not aware what classes were, that other programming languages had them, nor why it was so alarming that JS did not have them--it seemed to work just fine to me!).

Then I read "JavaScript Enlightenment," and everything started making sense. JavaScript stopped being the big bad wolf and started being my little kitchen helper. Plus I started working for a company where I got to own the JavaScript, CSS and HTML without having to justify every move to a head of Marketing who was afraid to let go of frames.

This and a trip to OSCON in summer kicked off a new Era of Enlightenment and Play for me. I read "The Manga Guide to Databases" and "Getting Started with Arduino." These have nothing to do with JavaScript, but somehow I feel like I understand so much more because of them. Now when I open "Eloquent JavaScript," I understand more of the words and can follow the logic better. This didn't happen when I was digging my way through repetitive books like "jQuery Novice to Ninja," even though it was about JavaScript (abstracted, but still JavaScript), and these are not linked back to JS at all.

All those JavaScript books I felt like I should be reading, I wish I'd recognized that they weren't getting me anywhere. I wish I'd stopped, backed up, and taken a completely different approach, like tackling Haskel or something not front-end. Instead, I did the worst possible thing: I beat my head against a wall, rereading things I already knew or trying to dig my way through things I had no way of understanding.

But now I know better. Now I know not to dig in when the tools obviously aren't doing the job. Now I know that instead of shifting to second gear to plow up an enormous grade, it's often better to roll to the bottom of the mountain and take a different road, one where you can enjoy the scenery instead of feeling bad while other people pass you.

This is the next book I want to read: http://manning.com/pearson/

It's not about JavaScript. It's not going to help me become a "JavaScript Ninja." But I'm going to learn so much and have so much fun with it.