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Show HN: The JavaScript Way, a book for learning modern JavaScript from scratch

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Re: Show HN: The JavaScript Way, a book for learning modern JavaScript from scratch

#72

Another great JS book on github... https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS

This is a pretty great one, and one of the books I recommend for anyone who is learning JS.

My favorite book to recommend though is Eloquent JavaScript (also free). Just a fantastic, readable, intro to programming and JS.

http://eloquentjavascript.net/

Re: Show HN: The JavaScript Way, a book for learning modern JavaScript from scratch

#73
post #2

Hi all, author here. Backstory: I'm a CS engineer/teacher and this book is a side project started in December 2016. You can read a bit more about it here: https://medium.com/@bpesquet/walk-this-javascript-way-e9c45a... . The writing process is now completed and I'm actively looking for feedback to make the book better. Any opinion or advice about content, pricing, or that hastily created Leanpub cover would be greatl…

This is a great idea but ES2017 instead of ES2015 would make it even easier for newcomers. This would allow `await` which is a lot easier for newcomers to follow than callbacks or .then(). Also you really want string.includes() !

Node and all current browsers support ES2017 so you don't really lose anything either.

Re: Show HN: The JavaScript Way, a book for learning modern JavaScript from scratch

#74
post #2

Hi all, author here. Backstory: I'm a CS engineer/teacher and this book is a side project started in December 2016. You can read a bit more about it here: https://medium.com/@bpesquet/walk-this-javascript-way-e9c45a... . The writing process is now completed and I'm actively looking for feedback to make the book better. Any opinion or advice about content, pricing, or that hastily created Leanpub cover would be greatl…

Nice. Thanks for sharing. Bravo for burrito recipe. I'm convinced I became a programmer in 4th grade. Our creative writing assignment was instructions for making a peanut butter & jelly sandwich. Then our teacher followed our instructions literally. Hilarity ensued. --- I think the Intro's link to the local env setup in the appendix is broken. Anymore, I always check the colophon first, then decide to proceed. I appl…

> I think the Intro's link to the local env setup in the appendix is broken.

The book is written using Leanpub's markdown syntactic sugar it seems.

Re: Show HN: The JavaScript Way, a book for learning modern JavaScript from scratch

#75

Should one learn ES2015 before learning ES5? Is there any value or need to learn ES5 if you're not maintaining an old codebase?

Not all browsers support ES2015 so knowing ES5 first is helpful.

All current browsers support ES2017.

If supporting IE or out of date mobile devices is worth your time (it might be, it might not be - consider CSS grid won't work, flexbox won't work, webcrypto won't work, HTML5 clipboard won't work, and you'll need double the time to deal with them and their awful devtools) transpiling is a good option.

Re: Show HN: The JavaScript Way, a book for learning modern JavaScript from scratch

#76

I just got home from teaching JavaScript to a room full of people who've never written a line of code in their life. This book is missing something critical that most intros to JavaScript overlook: How does the student set up the plumbing and run their code? It's amazing how much of a hump this is for many trying to get started. It also amazes me how oblivious most of us programmers are to it. "Just open Chrome Dev T…

Shouldn't the answer be obvious?

Every Python tutorial: type 'python' and enter commands into the REPL.

Every Ruby tutorial: type 'ruby' and enter commands into the REPL.

Every Exlixir tutorial: type 'iex' and enter commands into the REPL.

Every Perl tutorial: type 'perl' and enter commands into the REPL.

So for JavaScript: type 'node' and enter commands into the REPL.

Re: Show HN: The JavaScript Way, a book for learning modern JavaScript from scratch

#77
post #52
post #44

Looks great. I love modern JS, and the faster everyone can move on, the better! I didn't see any async/await stuff though, is there a reason for that? I'd imagine it would make some code much easier to follow.

> and the faster everyone can move on, the better! Why? Where does this mindset come from?

Direct style is easier to reason about. Control passes onto the next line consistently, for both async and sync operations.

Do you really prefer callbacks or just use them because they were once necessary? Are they so good you'd use them for sync operations too?

   add(a, b, function(sum){
     ....
   })
Personally: that seems like a waste of time. I'd rather just do:

  var sum = a + b;
Likewise I'd rather do:

  var response = await superagent.get('https://...')

Re: Show HN: The JavaScript Way, a book for learning modern JavaScript from scratch

#78

Another great JS book on github... https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS

This is a pretty great one, and one of the books I recommend for anyone who is learning JS. My favorite book to recommend though is Eloquent JavaScript (also free). Just a fantastic, readable, intro to programming and JS. http://eloquentjavascript.net/

Eloquent is good if your have prior programming experience. It starts easy but the 4th chapter goes quickly to a level above what I'd expect a beginner to understand without some exposure to programming or general CS theory. The exercises include a recursive list and recursive deep comparison.

Re: Show HN: The JavaScript Way, a book for learning modern JavaScript from scratch

#79
post #41
post #2

Hi all, author here. Backstory: I'm a CS engineer/teacher and this book is a side project started in December 2016. You can read a bit more about it here: https://medium.com/@bpesquet/walk-this-javascript-way-e9c45a... . The writing process is now completed and I'm actively looking for feedback to make the book better. Any opinion or advice about content, pricing, or that hastily created Leanpub cover would be greatl…

It might be too much to ask, but I really liked how the KnockoutJS tutorial was presented http://learn.knockoutjs.com/ You basically live code to learn the basics right in a browser. It would be cool to have something like this for the book

That demo is the reason I picked knockout years ago, never regretted it either, knockout was/is amazing and they understand backwards compatibility and API stability.
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