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JavaScript

javascript books

Does anyone knows about "Professional JavaScript for Web Developers" (Nicholas C. Zakas)? I heard it was very good. Is a 2012 book too old? or am I better off with his more recent "Understanding ECMAScript 6: The Definitive Guide for JavaScript Developers"?

And what about JavaScript Cookbook: Programming the Web (Shelley Powers)? Is it too much for a beginner?

4 Answers

Understanding ECMAScript 6: The Definitive Guide for JavaScript Developers" is a good way to supplement to learning ES6, (you will also need to learn babel if you want to use ES6 though). The books I use are; A smarter way to learn Javascript by Mark Myers, Javascript Crash Course by Robin Nixon. Also If Hemingway Wrote JavaScript, by Angus Croll is also fun and interesting.

If you are learning vanilla JS, 2012 is fine. The principles taught are the same as today. ES6 on the other hand is rather new so you will need to learn from a more recent book. Also Guil teaches a great course here on ES6, but having a book never hurts.

I hope this helps.

I heard of about vanilla JS but what is it really?

I thought that ECMAScript 6 was just the newest version of javascript... is it? I'm not sure by your answer...

vanilla JS is just plain old JavaScript. No frameworks like jQuery or anything. here is a good joke site about vanilla JS So if you are learning about arrays, functions, loops that is plane old JS.

ES6 is the newest version of JS, but it requires it to be precompiled. Browsers as of now cannot read ES6 on its own. So you have to use a compiler like Babel to render it into ES5 for the browser to understand.

Thanks! so If I want to use javascript mainly for website "Professional JavaScript for Web Developers" is up-to-date enough... but I'll the I'll take a look at your book reference... have a nice day!

Yeah, You should be good to go!

I always suggest Kyle Simpson's series YDKJS: https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS

It is free and it taught me a lot! I consider it worth mentioning. The other books mentioned seem great too! Happy coding :)

Thank you Corey, I'll into kyle's book!