How do they expect us to write and export functions for our first lines of code? Literally cannot get past any of the first problems because the way they want us to write code is so different than anywhere else I’ve learned. Why would they have us do Hello World as a function instead of just console.logging it? I just don’t get it…
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Yes, Exercism is generally intended for folks who are familiar with at least one programming language, therefore it is recommended to gain some fundamental knowledge elsewhere and come back when you are ready. If you would like some guidance to get pointed in the right direction, our maintainers have curated learning resources for each language, for example: Exercism’s Docs. You might also benefit from Codecademy or freeCodeCamp.
For your question about exporting a function, the reason for that is to prepare students for how real-world software is written. If you were say, writing a library, exporting the function makes it available to the rest of the program as well as any future users of the library. In that situation, logging to the console is basically only used for debugging during development.
In the future, we hope to fill this gap much better with a new Learn to Code platform. If you’d like to be notified when it becomes available, let us know and we can arrange that.
Sorry for the confusion 
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Hi @AarontKelley - Jonathan here (Exercism Community Manager). Firstly, welcome to Exercism but I’m sorry things are proving more difficult than expected.
As @porkostomus rightly points out, Exercism is perhaps more understandable if you have a little bit of additional experience and knowledge. Having said that, I found that my learning was significantly accelerated after having spent some time in CodeAcademy and working through Headfirst Go for a couple weeks, and then re-engaging with Exercism.
Let us know if you have any questions.