Ask HN: JavaScript book recommendations? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: JavaScript book recommendations?

20 pointsdawson14 comments

With node.js and all the other interesting JavaScript libraries being created, I'm keen to spend some time properly learning JavaScript. Can anyone recommend some good (up-to-date) books to get started with?

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JavaScript: The Good Parts, http://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Good-Parts-Douglas-Crockfor...

Watch Crockford on Javascript at ydn: http://developer.yahoo.net/blogs/theater/archives/douglas_cr...

Watch @ryah on nodejs at ydn: http://www.yuiblog.com/blog/2010/05/20/video-dahl/ (and the other javascript related videos linked on that page)

+1 for JavaScript: The Good Parts

Tempted to buy the Kindle edition. Any reasons for or against, compared to the printed?

For tech books, I prefer to be able to hold a book, flip around quickly to sections I'm interested in, and mark things with a bookmark.

Buy the printed book off amazon for 20 bucks. Personally, I'm not sold on the ebook experience for a number of reasons.

the ebook experience is great for stuff you just want to read and not have hanging round. Like autobios, novels etc.

It's not yet great for tech books, stuff where you have to jump around randomly rather than reading linearly, books with deep TOC.

I have a kindle edition of "Javascript the best parts" (I bought the ebook bundle, a mobi + pdf, on O'Reilly) and it's good enough. Usually when the book doesn't have long code examples it's fine to read on the kindle. OTOH, sometimes they will convert code to images, which is not so good (e.g python essential reference).

I hope the quality of programming books on the kindle will improve in the future, but now it's not too bad if you buy the mobi/pdf combo. You can always use the pdf on your computer if you need to check something quickly and your kindle is not nearby.

For me, the biggest advantage of having programming books on the kindle is that you can easily carry a few 1000+ pages books around and get some reading done when you have some unexpected down time.

I feel that programming books on the kindle are particularly good when you're learning something new and want to read sequentially. It's not so great for reference as you'd need to jump around and that's not kindle's forte. (although I do use the pdf as reference)

Edit: I forgot to mention that O'Reilly has a 7 day return policy on ebooks. I only wish they had a ebook sample like amazon has.

Start with:

http://eloquentjavascript.net/ (has pdf download)

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/A_re-introduction_to_JavaSc...

Most JS books are geared towards browser scripting. I would still recommend "JavaScript. The Definitive Guide" by David Flanagan.

Also watch all the Crockford Videos on JS: http://video.yahoo.com/watch/111593/1710507

After that all you will ever need is:

  * JavaScript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford (must have)
  * https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript/Reference
     (extensive, lots of examples and hints)

I can't find a PDF version of eloquent? Only HTML or print friendly.

JS: The Good Parts is will be a quick and informative read if you've already done a bit of JS programming. Once you're done with that, the next book I'd read is ppk on Javascript (http://www.amazon.com/ppk-JavaScript-1-Peter-Paul-Koch/dp/03...), as it's the only JS book I've found that talks at length about the BOM (browser object model). Finally, once you're comfortable with writing JS but really only need a library reference, you can pick up JavaScript: The Definitive Guide by David Flanagan, although you can probably do without it if your patience and Google-fu is strong enough.

'JavaScript: The Definitive Guide' by David Flanagan is a great book.

http://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Definitive-Guide-David-Flan...

Learn JavaScript, straight from the Gurus - Free JavaScript Video Lectures: http://www.devcurry.com/2010/09/learn-javascript-straight-fr...

if you understand all of the internals of how jQuery is written, you probably understand javascript pretty well. Javascript: the Good Parts will get you through most of the tricks that jQuery uses.

Pro JavaScript Techniques (Apress, 2006)

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