If you know the basics of PHP then you mostly also know the ground of JS, except a few rules (like in my next reply), the inheritance of globals, variables, the "for(y in x)" syntax and the more loosely callable syntax like: "function(){ alert(/Hey/); }();".

What a framework however gives you is an abstract interface to talk to the browser via DOM. So by using a framework you will still get to learn the JS syntax, but the DOM part will be mostly abstract and you won't learn how each browsers interact and works, which isn't important for now until you get the base gasp of it.

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