What Is the Best Book for Learning JavaScript?

Best Books To Learn JavaScript

JavaScript is an object-oriented computer programming language commonly used to create interactive effects within web browsers. Over the years, JavaScript has emerged as the go-to language for programmers who want to develop web applications that are more interactive and user-friendly.

JavaScript was first conceived in 1993 in the heady days of Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. The then king of browsers, Netscape Navigator founder Marc Andreessen believed that Netscape needed a “glue language” to support HTML that would be easy to use by Web designers and part-time programmers to assemble components such as images and plugins, where the code could be written directly in the Web page mark-up. Also, Bill Gates’ Microsoft Internet Explorer was eating into market share of Netscape Navigator. That is when Brendan Eich, father of JavaScript, was contracted by Netscape Communications to develop a “Scheme for the browser”.

Scheme is a Lisp dialect and, as such, comes with very little syntactic weight. It is dynamic, powerful, and functional in nature. The web needed something of the sort: easy to grasp syntactically; dynamic, to reduce verbosity and speed up development; and powerful. Eich saw a chance to work on something he liked and joined forces.

In 1995, JavaScript was developed under the name Mocha; however, the language was officially called “LiveScript” when it first shipped in beta releases of Netscape Navigator 2.0 in September 1995. But in December, it was renamed JavaScript when it was deployed in the Netscape Navigator 2.0 beta 3.

Eventually, competition from Google’s Chrome, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox saw the end of Netscape Navigator. However, JavaScript has gone on to live to this date powering the way how our webpages look like.

Not to be confused with Java, JavaScript is a high-level, popular, powerful, dynamic, untyped, and interpreted programming language. JavaScript is a scripting language that makes the pages interactive. JavaScript is the most commonly used programming language to create cool websites and games for the web. It derives much of its syntax from The C Language. Through JavaScript, you can add pop-up messages, etc. In recent years, JavaScript has also gained use as the foundation of Node.js, a server technology that among other things enables real-time communication.

So, what is the best book for learning JavaScript? This answer depends on many factors such as, what kind of learner are you? Or where do you find yourself on your learning journey? Or how much time do you have to spend and much more.

In this article, we bring to you the top three JavaScript books that are best according to us.

1. Effective JavaScript

After you have had some basic exposure to JavaScript, “Effective JavaScript” will take you on a guided tour of the language in more depth, showing by example lessons taught by a master programmer seasoned in his craft. Written by David Herman, this book walks through the syntax and semantics of JavaScript that is both charming and hugely insightful; reminders of gotchas complement realistic use cases, paced at a comfortable curve.

Right away, you will be introduced to some of the quirks of JavaScript, from floating point number precision (because JavaScript only has one number type, and it’s a floating point type), to the oddities of type coercions and semicolon insertion. Effective JavaScript is organized around 68 proven approaches for writing better JavaScript, backed by concrete examples. You will learn how to choose the right programming style for each project, manage unanticipated problems, and work more successfully with every facet of JavaScript programming. The rest of the book continues in the same style, exploring best practices for working with functions, objects, arrays, library and API design, and concurrency.

Once you finish the book, you will find that you have gained a strong and comprehensive sense of mastery. This is not a book for those looking for shortcuts; rather it is hard-won experience distilled into a guided tour.

2. Eloquent JavaScript, 2nd Edition

This is the second edition of the great book written by Marijn Haverbeke, which teaches you how to write precise, elegant and practical code.

“A concise and balanced mix of principles and pragmatics. I loved the tutorial-style game-like program development. This book rekindled my earliest joys of programming. Plus, JavaScript!” —Brendan Eich, creator of JavaScript.

It starts off with the basics of programming where you can learn to use variables, control structures, functions, and data structures. As you go deeper, you will dive into the real JavaScript artistry: higher-order functions, closures, and object-oriented programming.

Along the way, you will learn to master basic programming techniques and best practices, use regular expressions to quickly parse and manipulate strings, harness the power of functional and object-oriented programming, gracefully deal with errors and browser incompatibilities, handle browser events and alter the DOM structure. Most importantly, Eloquent JavaScript will teach you to express yourself in code with precision and beauty. After you’ve learned all that, the book will show you how to build an HTML game and some example apps with Node.js.

3. You don’t know JS

You don’t know JS by Kyle Simpson is a series of books that examine the inner workings of the JavaScript language. With the “You Don’t Know JS” book series, you will get a more complete understanding of JavaScript, including complex parts of the language that many experienced JavaScript programmers simply avoid.

The series’ first book, Up & Going, provides the necessary background for those with limited programming experience. By learning the basic building blocks of programming, as well as JavaScript’s core mechanisms, you’ll be prepared to dive into the other, more in-depth books in the series—and be well on your way toward true JavaScript.

With the help of this book, you can learn the essential programming building blocks, including operators, types, variables, conditionals, loops, and functions become familiar with JavaScript’s core mechanisms such as values, function closures and prototypes. Get an overview of other books in the series—and learn why it’s important to understand all parts of JavaScript.

The titles in this series are as follows:

• Up & Going (72 pages)
• Scope & Closures (83 pages)
• This & Object Prototypes (158 pages)
• Types & Grammar (182 pages)
• Async & Performance (280 pages)
• ES6 & Beyond (261 pages)

Each book can be purchased individually and they are all free to read online.

Please note that could be other books on JavaScript that may be better than the ones given above. If you know of a better JavaScript book, do let us know in the comments section below.

Source: SitePoint