# Very basic question from a Newbie

**URL:** <https://talk.observablehq.com/t/very-basic-question-from-a-newbie/8256>\
**Category:** Help\
**Created:** [September 7, 2023, 5:49pm UTC](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/very-basic-question-from-a-newbie/8256 "2023-09-07T17:49:05Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![zartyBlartfast](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/439d5e/32.png) [@zartyBlartfast](https://talk.observablehq.com/u/zartyBlartfast)\
**Post date:** [September 7, 2023, 5:49pm UTC](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/very-basic-question-from-a-newbie/8256/1 "2023-09-07T17:49:05Z")

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I am newbie. Excuse me. I am someone who just wants to learn about coding interesting stuff using javascript and, if I download a Fork of something I want to try to adapt, I want a vanilla javascript code set I can run in any browser. However, unless I have misunderstood or overlooked something, the javascript in notebooks isn’t easily converted into vanilla javascript to use in Visual Studio Code (for example) without observable specific code? Ideally, I would want to export from a vanilla project to an observable notebook and back again. Is this not possible?

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**Author:** ![Cobus](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/talk.observablehq.com/cobus/32/9670_2.png) [@Cobus](https://talk.observablehq.com/u/Cobus)\
**Post date:** [September 7, 2023, 10:19pm UTC](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/very-basic-question-from-a-newbie/8256/2 "2023-09-07T22:19:55Z")

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I would say that is possible, but with a few caveats. In Observable, the code is separated into cells, but you could have a single JavaScript function in a cell, and then have other cells that call that function. I often do this to create and debug a JavaScript function.

Have a look at this documentation:

> **[Observable JavaScript](https://observablehq.com/@observablehq/observable-javascript)**
>
> JavaScript on Observable is almost — but not entirely — vanilla. This is intentional: by building on the native language of the web, Observable is familiar. And you can use the libraries you know and love, such as D3, Lodash, and Apache Arrow....