Is 30 Too Old to Learn JavaScript?

While certain skills are more difficult to learn after age 30 — like speaking a new language, playing an instrument, or gymnastics — programming, fortunately, is not. Learning to code is a matter of knowledge and experience. Anyone with the patience, concentration, and time to work through the necessary lessons and exercises can learn JavaScript. Not only is it possible to learn JavaScript at age 30 or older, it might actually be easier for experienced adults. People with prior knowledge of logic, mathematics, computer science, or best of all, programming in another language will find these skills useful when learning JavaScript. Also, many students over 30 are more dedicated to their studies and have a better idea of their learning goals, traits that help them learn faster. True, older students are more likely to have responsibilities that can limit their study time, like a job and a family, but many professional training schools offer scheduling options designed to work around these challenges. Learning JavaScript can also help older professionals transition to a more modern career, especially if they are already interested in a related field like web design, web development, or software development.

Why Learn JavaScript at 30?

For students in their 30s and beyond, the top reason to learn JavaScript is for career advancement. Many JavaScript students need to learn the language to continue in their current position, earn promotion to a better position, or seek an entirely new career. For example, a web content creator may want to expand into web design or web development. A front end web developer could be asked to learn more advanced JavaScript to also handle back end development for their employer. Just as likely, though, an underemployed or recently unemployed adult might seek a better-paying, more secure career in a technical field that requires JavaScript proficiency. 

Alternately, some older students want to use JavaScript to create specific products like websites, web components (for example, reusable online maps), mobile apps, or video games. These students could be hobbyists, business owners building assets like online advertising or sales, or aspiring independent developers. A few adult students, such as professional coders, technology scholars, or coding enthusiasts, just want to explore JavaScript and compare it to other programming languages. Recently, professionals working in multiple fields have noticed JavaScript’s potential for machine learning applications and started studying the language for this purpose.

How Long Will It Take to Learn JavaScript?

The length of a student’s JavaScript study depends on how much they need to know. Basic competency in JavaScript, enough to read, edit, and create simple scripts on websites, is relatively quick to learn. Most beginning students can manage this fluency in one or two weeks, even if working through self-guided lessons like online tutorials or video classes. Dedicated, full-time students, especially those taking a formal introductory course with a live instructor, can achieve this basic ability in a few days. Note that these estimates do not count time spent on preliminary studies like computer literacy or related coding languages like HTML, which can delay the start of JavaScript study but will greatly improve a student’s ability to learn JavaScript quickly. Still, a well-designed introductory course can overcome some limitations due to a lack of prior experience. 

Greater fluency, sufficient to create complete JavaScript projects and qualify for entry-level positions, takes longer to achieve. Depending on the course, the projects learned might be applications, websites, or functional JavaScript components usable in multiple environments. To complete such creations, students must learn how to code assets like responsive user interfaces (including controls and displays), animations, database systems, and security features. The additional time spent in these intermediate studies covers specialized coding techniques, JavaScript libraries, coding frameworks, and other tools, plus practice with multiple projects of increasing complexity. Again, an accelerated, full-time training course like a bootcamp generally finishes in the shortest time frame, around five to eight weeks. Studying to this level with self-guided resources can take longer due to delayed or absent feedback and could extend over several months.

Building professional JavaScript skill, enough to confidently qualify for a job in fields like front end web development or mobile application development, requires still more study time. This intermediate-to-advanced training includes industry tools like collaborative coding platforms and specialized JavaScript libraries, challenging techniques like object-oriented programming, and complex projects that duplicate real-world assignments. The fastest path to career-level ability in JavaScript is a full-time live professional training course, which takes at least three months. Professional skill learned by other methods, either part-time live classes or self-guided lessons, could take five to six months or longer. Beyond this professional training, achieving mastery in JavaScript takes a combination of advanced coursework, working experience with real projects, and practice with coding challenges. Some sources suggest that a year of active use is enough to claim mastery of JavaScript, but three to four years is a better estimate if a coder wants enough expertise to handle any possible project. Even for such senior programmers, JavaScript’s updates and expanding libraries always provide something new to learn.

Ways to Make Learning JavaScript Easier and Quicker

If a student has some time available before they begin studying JavaScript, exploring other programming languages, especially HTML, will reduce delays and difficulties in any JavaScript course. Some intensive JavaScript courses recommend prior experience with both HTML and CSS so that students can understand and use JavaScript more quickly. Similarly, if a student has purchased a formal JavaScript course, either as on-demand lessons or live classes, previewing the language through a free tutorial can improve their understanding and ease the difficulties of early lessons. Supplementing classwork with additional free tutorials, exercises, and coding challenges can also help, although this advice assumes that students have extra study time available each day. 

Similarly, the more time a student can spend per day studying, the faster they can learn. Taking a live course on a full-time schedule — usually defined as six to eight classroom hours per day, for five days each week — presents the most material in the shortest time frame. A live course also helps students work faster and more efficiently through quicker feedback and fewer distractions. A live instructor can answer students’ questions right away and review their projects faster compared to the delayed, limited feedback from an on-demand program. Instructors can also rephrase explanations and catch errors early, reducing the chances that a student will fall behind. Nonetheless, if a student needs to take an on-demand course or work from free resources, dedicating more hours per day will still speed their progress. Some students can make up for the inherent delays of self-paced methods by maintaining a self-imposed full-time schedule. 

Other students cannot devote this much time, per day or per week, to their studies. Many live study programs offer part-time scheduling options, where the time commitment is reduced to four or fewer hours per day, often during evening hours, and classes are more widely spaced, with only two or three class sessions per week. This reduced schedule helps to accommodate working students, those with family responsibilities, or students who need a less intensive schedule for other reasons. For some students, part-time study is easier to manage and more productive, as they get more time between classes to process lessons and complete assignments. Some students find it difficult to concentrate during longer class sessions, so part-time study keeps them from losing focus and missing information. While part-time courses do take longer to complete than their full-time counterparts, live study still has advantages over on-demand and free lessons. This is particularly true for longer courses, where the delays and frustrations from limited feedback multiply over time and increase further for later, more difficult lessons. Part-time live classes also still maintain a regular, steady schedule, motivating students to keep pace. Particularly when working around life distractions, self-paced studies can be tempting to set aside and delay still further. Self-paced students must push themselves harder and set time goals if they want to avoid losing focus and potentially abandoning their studies altogether.

Learn JavaScript with Noble Desktop

Noble Desktop offers three courses teaching JavaScript, each focusing on its use in web development. These courses are designed to meet the needs of different students and vary correspondingly in length. The shortest of these classes, JavaScript for Front-End, can be completed in about three full days. This introductory class teaches JavaScript programming centered around its uses in front end web development. The course does request that students have some prior knowledge of HTML and CSS, ideally from experience with web design or front end web development. Building on this basis, the instructor will explain how JavaScript adds to the functionality of websites, teach the language’s terminology and syntax, and demonstrate its core programming techniques. The second half of the course teaches GreenSock, an animation platform for JavaScript that helps to script animated website components. The course includes a proprietary workbook, awards a certificate upon completion, and may be retaken once for free within one year.

Noble Desktop’s JavaScript Programming Bootcamp is a more complete, career-focused course in JavaScript centered on its uses in web development. This course also requests that students have prior web design or web development experience. The bootcamp course is accelerated, but its thorough curriculum still requires several weeks of full-time study. During this time, students progress from the basic concepts and features of JavaScript programming through increasingly complex techniques and tools, including additions from the most recent JavaScript releases. Throughout this study, students work on sample projects of increasing complexity, and their finished projects are suitable for a starting portfolio. The course also addresses common JavaScript-related interview questions and provides additional career guidance, including a bonus 1-on-1 mentoring session with an instructor. This bootcamp course includes supplemental workbooks, access to class recordings, and a certificate of completion. Students can also retake the class once for free for up to a year.

The longest and most complete of Noble Desktop’s JavaScript courses is their JavaScript Development Certificate program, a comprehensive program running 14 weeks for full-time study. This is a complete, career-oriented study program that prepares students for professional work using JavaScript. Its main focus is on web development, and students should have prior experience coding in HTML and CSS for web design or development. The first part of this certificate program is identical to Noble Desktop’s JavaScript Programming Bootcamp and trains students to use basic, ‘vanilla’ JavaScript programming. The course then progresses through advanced units on JavaScript coding for websites, including the Node.js, Express.js, and React libraries, the MongoDB database management system, and programming for security and user interface functions. The course also includes a bonus unit on SQL, a data management language used in many websites. Finally, the course prepares students for their job search by building a portfolio of their course projects and practicing sample interview questions. Each student also receives eight 1-on-1 mentoring sessions with an instructor to further refine their career plans or address any difficult course topics. The program includes supplemental written materials and access to all class recordings. Students receive a NY State-Licenced certificate upon completion and can retake the course once for free for up to one year.