Time quotes for learning JavaScript

Question

I'm interested in helping a friend out this summer with some JavaScript trouble he is having on his website. The trouble being specifically in regards to:

technical difficulties with the the online form submissions. Sometimes we are not able to verify them, or users are not able to submit.

I am experienced working with C and Java from my university programming classes, however I have yet to come into contact with any sort of JavaScript, web development, or database programming.

So my questions would be:

1. Is teaching myself the necessary skills to troubleshoot his issues an undertakable task for a second year computer engineering student?
2. What skills are needed?
3. How much time would you guess I can expect to troubleshoot and solve his website form issue.

Thanks tons!

Answer 1

A good rule of thumb is that it will take about 1000 hours of using something (in this case JavaScript) to become professional at it.

That said, since you have coded before, you might be able to start helping your friend right away. Sometimes all it takes is a second set of eyes to look at something to see a problem.

It is definitely an undertakable task for a second year computer engineer. I would highly suggest helping him out.

I'd look at his code immediately, then spend a week doing tutorials and take a second look.

Some things to note:

Website forms aren't just JavaScript. There are multiple parts:

1. The form itself in JavaScript
2. Sanitizing the input (in JavaScript) so users don't enter bad data
3. Sanitizing the input once you have received on the server, so that users don't send malicious data.

Finally, please note that Stackoverflow is more geared towards attempting to answer specific technical questions, so if your friend has a very specific case where his code has failed, you should post that sort of thing here.