You Don't Know JS Series

In depth books on JavaScript, very good content and well written. Would highly recommend for anyone that wants to get a strong understanding of how JavaScript works.

The best part is they are all posted for free on GitHub.

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Yeah, great books. I don’t know if I would recommend them for beginners (except maybe the first few). But there is some deep stuff in there.

They feel to me like books for someone who already can write some programs in JavaScript but needs to know how to write it right.
A bit too theoretical for a beginner.

I think I’ll return to it after doing the JS part of fCC.

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That’s probably correct, there is a book in there called “up and going” that I believe is geared towards getting beginners up to speed before getting into the deeper topics. I can’t speak to how good it is though as I haven’t read it.

there is a video series in which Kyle goes in depth with someone else and it explains it soo magnificently

Well, that’s the impression I got since the first book. It’s still pretty bad for beginners, because the nature of JavaScript makes it possible to use practically even for beginners.
For example you can have some very simple script as a part of a page, while for example with C++ you need to learn ton of stuff, get into libraries, etc. to do anything remotely useful.
So, IMO, teaching JavaScript should start with placing a script in a webpage and doing something with it, so you can apply stuff you’re getting taught in practice.
Limiting teaching to console makes it just another tedious programming language that needs to be learned for a long time mostly on theoretical level to get anywhere.

Like, yeah, you get to write a simple program in the book, but why not put it properly on a webpage?

Fair enough, I’ve never read the first one and had worked with JS before so I can’t comment. Would mainly recommend them for someone trying to fully understand Javascript and be able to answer a lot of the “tricky” interview questions that get asked.

I do disagree that most people should jump right into DOM manipulation before learning about things like data types, type coercion, variables, operators, scope, etc. But if it worked for you that’s all that matters.

True. I remember being annoyed by W3C JS course putting it in front, then playing with various plugins before finally getting to basics.

It’s covered by 2/3 of the first booklet, though so it would be a good moment to introduce putting it on a page.

The booklets definitely didn’t work for me because halfway through 2nd one, I ditched it because I realized it doesn’t teach me how to program just technicalities of that specific language and started the UBCx: HtC1x How to Code: Simple Data MOOC on EDX.
It’s simply not a good series for someone who isn’t already using JavaScript.

If I’m going to go back to them, it’s going to be after I’ll learn to use it somewhere else because that’s the target audience for them. If “somewhere else” doesn’t cover what is said in booklets, that is.

I am a beginner but I find the series quite good to get into I am on the third book. So, 3 of the first books are good so far. But, maybe it depends on your learning style. Or maybe it is because I have some experience with other languages before. Coding isn’t easy but I think people are exaggerating a lot about the difficulty of the books.

Honestly, the thing I find really difficulty about JavaScript is Dom. More on the theory part not the practical stuff technically. :smile:

Thanks for sharing this topic. I like it !