JavaScript: The Good Parts
by Douglas Crockford
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Book Reviews of JavaScript: The Good Parts
Book Review: Finally, another good book about JavaScript
Summary: 5 Stars
JavaScript: The Definitive Guide has been, for years, the only really good JavaScript book available. It's amazing, since JavaScript is the world's most popular language. Nearly every computer has it.
JavaScript: The Good Parts is well written and terse. I'm an experienced programmer, and have worked with JavaScript for some time now, so I don't know how well it would work for an amateur, but I suspect any programmer that has no JavaScript experience would do very well to read this book first and keep The Definitive Guide as a secondary reference, especially when reading someone else's JavaScript.
I rely heavily on the YUI libraries that Crockford's company puts out, and on Crockford's JSlint.com utility. Put together with the advice in this book, and JavaScript shines as a very nice language.
Book Review: Worst book I read in a long time
Summary: 1 Stars
I can't recommend this book. Imagine your worst teacher. The guy who could put you into a coma only by thinking of him. A boring guy that can't teach, but tries to speak about fact after fact. Using huge diagrams and tons of boring examples. And now try to imagine that this teacher tries to write a book. This is exactly what you will get.
It's a sleeping pill in book form. Unbelievable. The author really thinks that by showing railroad diagrams he can explain the language. But we don't want to write a lexer for a compiler. We want to learn good Javascript. And tons of diagrams won't help here. He even tries to explain RegExp-parsing with those Diagrams.
And the pages where he shows how to write a JSON-Parser?! Why?! Oh my god.
In short: stay away from this book. Really far away.
Book Review: Beautiful book
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a beautiful book.
First of all - at only 170 pages it is short. Even though some of the key points are repeated through the book it's dense with information. You don't need any JavaScript experience, but it's not a "beginning programming" book so if you haven't been programming before this is not the right book for you.
Reading this book a couple of times will give you an appreciation for the JavaScript language that you almost certainly didn't have before. It'll give you tools to write better programs that you and others will actually be able to maintain over time.
I've learned lots of little things that I maybe knew from experience, but now I _know_ and I know why.
This book will help you battle with JavaScript rather than against it.
Book Review: Effective JavaScript
Summary: 4 Stars
I would recommend you think of this book as the JavaScript equivalent of Effective Java (2nd Edition) (Java Series) or Effective C++: 55 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs (3rd Edition) (Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series). You're still going to need to get JavaScript: The Definitive Guide to learn how to use JavaScript in your web pages, but this book will deepen your understanding of JavaScript and show you how to write cleaner code.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
Book Review: Good but be aware of some typos...
Summary: 4 Stars
The book is generally good and very helpful.
But beware of the critical typos right in the CODE examples that renders the code in question useless (not function).
For example, in section 4.3.1,
var myObject = {
value: 0;
.....
is wrong. It should be value: 0, (<-- comma after 0 not a semi-colon)
The example as it is written in the book will not run as described.
This will ultimately slow you down if you're a beginner.
I don't care about the typos in other parts of the book but a critical typo in the CODE in a book that teaches CODE is unacceptable.
Overall, the book is worth a reading.
But just be aware of the occasional typos.