How (and is it possible) to reach the Junior JavaScript Developer in the shortest possible time?

Question

JavaScript

Baseline: 30+, no-IT tower and Ph.D. (natural sciences). Fluent English. Moscow. I used to intersect with IT, but superficially: a little Python for work, a little Java for interest, there is nothing to show. A few months ago, I decided to move into webdev. Study-in-the-nights didn't fit with my job, so I recently quit my job to switch (almost) entirely to IT. There is a financial cushion, but thin.
Now the situation is like this. I am more or less proficient in HTML, CSS and basic JavaScript. Familiar with Git and Sass, a little bit with node.js and npm. I made a large (but static) site with adaptive layout for my friends, I implemented all the elements myself (without ready-made solutions, pure CSS / JS).
Theoretically, you can make up a couple of pages from psd layouts (show at the same time owning the same Bootstrap and jQuery?), Put them in your portfolio and look for a vacancy for a layout designer. But I quit for JavaScript and would really like to jump straight into the position of Junior JavaScript Developer. In general, I really want to dig into some kind of mean stack, but it seems that there are no junior vacancies for it - and it is very difficult for me to estimate how long I need to lay down for it.
I have about a month to finish my studies (two from the strength), though with almost complete immersion. Is it possible to reach the Junior JavaScript Developer during this time? What do they want from them? What to focus on in the classroom: sawing your project or taking courses? delve into "naked" JavaScript or deal with frameworks (which one to choose?) and databases? Or is the ability to handle AJAX generally enough?
Or is it all a utopia, but you still have to start from the position of a layout designer?
I would be grateful for any ideas/advice/information.
Update
Thank you all for the opinions, ideas and links! I especially thank the pessimists: I now look at vacancies with different eyes.
Fixing communication failure. "Basic JS" in my universe is not "yesterday I saw something, today I'm picking something", but "I know the language, but I haven't done socially significant projects". This is at least the same basic learn.javascript.ru course, as I understand now (having thoroughly dug everything there and solved random problems). It will be necessary to clearly indicate this in responses to vacancies, otherwise they will accept it for "enter-in-it-for-a-month".
In general, you will have to work like a galley slave, you have to ask ASAP for interviews and, probably, work for food at first, but there are chances. Thank you all again!

Answer 1

First, there is no limit to perfection.
Secondly: it is impossible to embrace the immensity and shove the unimaginable.
Thirdly: no matter how cool you are, technology is developing faster, so a lag is inevitable, as a result, you always have to sacrifice something for something more important.
Total: the customer is not interested in your philosophical suffering. He is interested in how quickly, efficiently and for what money you will solve his problems. You decide in a reasonable time, an adequate price tag and with satisfactory quality - no matter what you call yourself, there will be demand for you.
The junior/seniority of a particular developer is a very conditionally subjective thing. From my own experience, I’ll say that it’s one thing when you are the first and only guy in the village - you are almost a god, then with the same head, the same hands, experience and knowledge you find yourself in an environment of gods like yourself, of varying degrees of seniority of gods, and, suddenly , you are a raw June but with very good potential.
I don't really understand why you were suddenly drawn into development. In general, this is a very dreary and routine business, and it would be necessary, for good, to love it very much, so that it’s a pearl, then there is a chance to catch on, hold on and even evolve as a developer.
For starters, I would be thoroughly convinced that this is exactly what I would like to do for the next five or even ten years, because otherwise it’s not even worth starting.
I got into programming very early, at the age of 14-15. I felt my own boundless power, the obedient piece of iron carried out any of my orders, any of my whims, provided that it was correctly formulated. If a piece of iron did not do what it needed, or did what it didn’t need, then it was always my fault, it meant that I screwed up. Such a realization overtook me very hastily, after which the brain began to be intensely disciplined, and the number of fierce fails began to wane.
Commercial development is about 70% of the time / effort for debugging and fixing, because few processes are set up correctly. To this day (and I'm under 40), I've only seen one team, where the processes are generally very well set up, and I was lucky to work with them for some time. In these few months, I have grown a whole head. It would be very difficult to achieve similar results on your own.
I myself changed the stack quite recently, started at the end of 15, and the process is still ongoing. I changed it for one simple reason - in all my previous projects, most of the logic from the back went to the front, and the most beautiful jQuery stopped coping a little more than completely. He is still good, but the tasks that have to be solved require completely different approaches. For myself, I chose React, but in general there are alternatives on the market. According to my data, Angular 2+ is in very high demand.
When they talk about front-end development, they constantly talk about technologies, the stack, but almost no one mentions that it is not a single stack ... An essential part of development is, for starters, to understand the task and build a model in your head. Customers are different, from very intelligent to very stupid. The ratio of the first to the second is approximately 1% and everything else ... Ie. in most cases, they will tell you the minimum, in a peculiar way, plus you will understand it in your own way. Then, in the course of the play, at the most inopportune moments, details will begin to emerge that: they forgot to mention; Well, it's obvious, you're a pro; we ourselves did not know, it only became clear; well, these are trifles, we think it will not be difficult for you; and you didn't ask; etc....
As a result, from my own experience I will say that often projects around the middle look terrible and are lined with crutches. In my experience, it happened more than once that it worked out normally only once from the third or fourth ...
It would seem, but what does this have to do with June? Yes, the most direct, because rarely in which team will a junior be taken as a junior. Usually a junior is hired to pay less, and the work will be thrown where as a middle, and where and as a senior, because, often, business does not fatten, resources are severely limited, tasks need to be solved at least somehow, and decisions are made by people who have nothing in our really don't understand...
If you find yourself in a team where people are understanding, qualified, processes are built, and June tasks will be unloaded by June, then consider yourself very lucky. The chances of this happening are about 1%. Especially considering that juniors are usually students around 20 years old ...
When I changed the stack, I was also a 35-year-old junior for some time. There's nothing you can do about it, because, all of a sudden, the stack is for a reason, and there are a lot of nuances that you can't master at once. It takes time and effort, sometimes a lot of time and a lot of effort, to feel everything, try it by heart, understand and realize it. Yes, all the previous baggage serves as a support and support, and where a real jun will dig for weeks, in a couple of hours, by analogy, you will catch the idea and move on. But no one canceled these couple of hours, and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of ideas that need to be caught...
The hardest thing to figure out is the architecture of a particular project, because, all of a sudden, coding style and conventions are extremely important if you're not the only one working on a project from start to finish. If before you, together with you or after you, someone will work on the project, refine it, support it, fix bugs, in the end (and they happen always and everywhere), then it is very desirable that any developer be able to , quickly and easily penetrate, understand and understand what's what, where, where, why and why. Most often, projects have problems with this, so overhead costs multiply, and the effect fades, aggravated by staff turnover.
Even if you come across an almost perfect project, it suddenly turns out that your RAM is 5-7+-2 objects, and you need to keep hundreds in your head at the same time...
Why am I telling all this? Then, that this is a reality that does not make exceptions for the juniors.
The term "fuck-fuck and in production" is ubiquitous, tk. resources (money, time, personnel) are almost always very severely limited and there is nothing you can do about it.
In this regard, everything is easier for a layout designer, because his work can be seen immediately and with the naked eye. But just a layout designer and a good layout designer is the earth and the sky.
On the other hand, they now prefer the front, which also makes good layouts. Thank flexbox and modern browsers, this is much easier to do now than it was years ago.
Now, regarding what to do - if there are no strong skills in algorithmics and data structures in the background (programming olympiads, a university course in computer science), then I strongly recommend pumping it. As a mentor in several front-end courses, I constantly meet students who "seem to" know the language, but find it difficult to put together a couple of cycles with conditions, they literally just hang for an indefinite time, and without result. Personally, I recommend kodvars. I train my students there. It is enough to solve 30-40 puzzles so that the basic skills go to the level of reflexes and the brain stops soaring. True, it is desirable to solve this all with a mentor.
An indirect bonus here is that you will get used to solving problems in JavaScript. When I changed the stack, at first I thought in PHP, and a similar trick on codewars allowed me to reformat my thinking in JS. Here is my codewars profile as a proof: https://www.codewars.com/users/iCoderXXI
Further, when you get comfortable in JS practically, it will be very good to understand how closures and prototypal inheritance work thoroughly. This is the basis of the basics, and this is asked at every first social security.
You need to understand it so deeply that you can easily and simply, with humor, tell it to any first grandmother you meet, so that she understands everything ... This is the direct key to success in JS, because everything else rests on these two pillars. YouTube has a Zorax course and JavaScript Weird Parts, both about the same thing, the first in Russian, the second in English. Kantor is definitely cool, but these two explain in a simpler and more understandable way (IMHO).
After that, we’ll level up in using built-in JS methods, such as map, reduce, includes, replace, etc. (on the same codebase)
After that, we need to level up in ES6+, arrow functions, let/const, destructuring, rest operator, classes, promises, generators, async/await, decorators - without these advanced things, there is nothing to catch in modern frameworks.
After that, we again go to kodvars, and we solve the same thing using new knowledge. Suddenly, the code becomes many times more concise, clearer and more readable.
Then we focus on the forms API, DOM, AJAX (fetch / axios), web sockets, Localstorage, etc.
And only now you can switch to frameworks. Vue is the easiest to learn (according to rumors), React and Angular are the most in demand, for general development it would also be nice to hear a little about Ember.JS.
React only looks simple at first glance, in fact it is only a view library, and in any normal SPA there is a lot more besides view, so React always goes in the company of Redux, Router, and a whole bunch of everything else that you also have to master, not only from the point of view of the API, but also from the point of view of philosophy (why the hell did it give up at all?)
Before going to social services, it is very desirable to have a portfolio of several finished projects, polished stylistically.
Next, we refresh the JS base - types, closures, prototypes, and boldly stomp on social security, being morally ready to fill up the first ten.
In general, there are not a lot of junior vacancies, definitely much less than juniors applying for them. But there is an acute shortage of seniors and middles on the market, so the strategy is this - to swing to the middle without options.
Also, big companies like Yandex arrange summer training, followed by employment of the best candidates, but this is not certain.
An optimistic forecast is 6-12 months of tight figuring and you are in a trend.

Answer 2

And in such a situation, I would immediately go through interviews for the right vacancy and watch what they ask, write down, come home and figure out "what did you want-tooo?". Using this technology, a brother (student) found a job as a junior system administrator (from scratch) in 2 months
.

Answer 3

1. Write JS code daily. Well, except for the weekend. At least a little bit, but you need to do something new every day. Start (anything for YOU?) Do something of your own - some kind of plugin, or a web application.
2. Lessons I can recommend from Codedojo. (there is on torrents, if necessary, I will throw the address in VK). Subscription there 500 r / month with access to all lessons.
3. You need to master the basics of JS (ES6 of course)
Here are sample interview questions - see (except for React of course)
Another list. Here is a set of tests. You can see what is approximately given as a test task - see

Answer 4

Read a couple of books on Javascript and here you are Junior

Answer 5

Что от них хотят?
Go to the interview, they will tell you everything
people are different, someone needs 2 weeks, someone needs half a year
What is required of you, and you will find out, is based on the requirements for a particular vacancy.

Answer 6

It's harsh with you, although I was in the same situation quite recently. But I have several years of studying the web behind me, and js is at a good level.
I advise you not to take on MEAN, Angular is difficult to master in a short time, plus Node.js is still a backend, it is difficult to pull the back in a short time. The node is needed only as an auxiliary tool.
Focus on React, it's the hottest job posting right now. This is the front, and layout will come in handy here.

Answer 7

1) https://learn.javascript.ru
2) https://www.codewars.com/
3) theory.phphtml.net/tasks/javascript
4) kharchuk.ru/JavaScript.pdf

Answer 8

You don't need any codedojo, that's 100%. Here I can recommend a good course:
https://www.udemy.com/react-the-complete-guide-inc...
And then something like this:
https://www.udemy.com/mern-stack- front-to-back/
As for work, I think your skills are enough for now to get a job somewhere. Go to a couple of interviews, as already mentioned here, get feedback, the picture will immediately become more complete.

Answer 9

You will become a junior at least after 1-2 years of commercial development experience (before that only a trainee)
Middle after 5-7 years.
Senior after 10-12 years

Answer 10

there is a no-IT tower and a PhD (natural sciences)

well, that's all. What else does? What is it for? And I have a guitar at home.
In Moscow, of course, books are better read than in Tver, for example.
A lot of spam, just a link and "what do you guys think?"
Yes, it all depends on the person. The quality of the brain is different for everyone, and for some at 30 it is already a static gray mass. But you apparently passed it, since there is a desire to change everything.
That they work cheap
All together with a focus on raw JavaScript
It's not about your skill, it's about the market. There are many layout designers, as well as layout tasks. Most companies sculpt crap, but, sorry, sites on wp, collecting from ready-made templates and plugins. So the problem here is that it will be difficult to find the position of a frontend specialist, regardless of skill. But probably.

Answer 11

Just watch this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeXuUGgiwyw
Well, this is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtlVno8igVQ
"Vuy" for beginners is it. Simple things are done simply, as they should be. This maintains scalability.
I will not be able to solve your problem, but if you want to make a few covens along the front for little money but with help and tips, then contact me.
ps. you don’t need to focus on pure js now, they haven’t paid for it for a long time, and those who pay won’t live long. Choose a fremwork. But you need to understand the basics of js. They can be learned in a day of hard training. If you don’t succeed in a day, then you are either not persistent in your aspirations, or you are asking the wrong questions.

Answer 12

You are already a junior. You need to grow to the middle. Junior speaks a very mediocre language

Answer 13

"Junior JavaScript Developer" is what you'll never be.
Forget.
This is not your case.
Yuzay guides.
But you can become a "Beginner JS Developer"!
You haven't really done anything yet - and you're already dreaming of a job.
A coder is not serious, it is an underprogrammer.
Become a real programmer ™ for a start - it takes three years of study and practice, as in a technical school-university, otherwise nothing, brains grow slowly.
What do you think, you will talk fashionable words and pass for a programmer?
To become a real programmer ™ you need to complete a minimum training program - make a thread chat blog forum with your own hands and your brains, without someone else's ready-made code.
+php learn the basics a bit, no frameworks.
You should be able to do simple things yourself - after that, think further what to learn and where to work
Master the four basic web languages ​​- and make a simple client-server bike. And then enlightenment will surely come.
From simple to complex, and not vice versa, through w
On church-IT, this is the simplest basic "main stack".
Karoch - you better be a full-stack aunt.

Answer 14

I also follow the path of Junior web developer, or whatever it is more competent, the main thing is to get a position and start a commercial path. And I agree that it is necessary to focus on JS.
scored on html in terms of semantics. div'atose). I do not pay attention to the nuances of semantic tags: main is not main, section is not section, etc. I don’t understand - div with the corresponding class)
in terms of CSS, some almanac of styles is taken, the same McFarland, there are fundamental unchanging css foundations: cascade inheritance, selector types, the rest is junk there. Of course, you can do it purely for yourself on floats and feel how you used to suffer. Everything else in css is actual articles, forums, topics, cases. Well, 80 percent of the time is JS
For example, I myself invent tasks for JS. I am trying in JS, having studied in detail the work of such properties as flex-grow, flex-shrink, to implement the algorithm for their work in JS. The brain is boiling, but then I’m honing JS in parallel and if I don’t typeset, then I remember the work of these properties and don’t forget, then I can’t typeset for weeks