I remember "JavaScript: The Good Parts" by Douglas Crockford touched some parts in depth. Also "You Don't Know JS Yet" has some depth in it https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS
Nice, I will take a look at both of them for sure
Ask HN: Best books to learn web development?
11–20 of 51 posts
Re: Ask HN: Best books to learn web development?
#12https://www.amazon.com/DOM-Scripting-Design-JavaScript-Docum...
1. If you want to be good at this start with a solid foundation. The compile target of the browser is the DOM (Document Object Model).
2. Read about accessibility: https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/ Understanding accessibility will influence why things are done in certain ways and will make clear the difference between presentation and developers who may not understand this platform as well as they claim.
3. Learn about events and asynchronous execution.
4. Finally, learn to program JavaScript, but understand OOP is optional and considerably more work.
If you can build even the most minor of confidence in those 4 areas you will become a stellar developer compared to your peers working on this platform.
Re: Ask HN: Best books to learn web development?
#13I learned HTML and CSS mainly from MDN, so that's where I suggest you look. As for stuff I use in css most often I can only recommend a few articles and such. Learn how to use Flexbox and CSS Grid though for sure (as those are the two most modern ways to layout an HTML page) as well as CSS Positioning [0] (which is some of the older ways to lay things out).
[0]: https://alistapart.com/article/css-positioning-101/
For JS there are some online books that are gold mines the problem is finding them. One is Eloquent JavaScript which is available to read online for free here [1].
[1]: https://eloquentjavascript.net/
Though I've never actually finished the whole thing it does a pretty great job explaining JS to the uninitiated.
My other favorite books in JS are actually all from the same person Axel Rauschmayer. All of his books are available online for free here [2]. He has a really good way of explaining in my opinion and his books kind of take out all the fluff.
Re: Ask HN: Best books to learn web development?
#14Caveat to most of the answers so far - you can read Javascript books until you're blue in the face, you need to build stuff as much as possible.
Re: Ask HN: Best books to learn web development?
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
This seems like an interesting resource for people who already work in the industry and know what the modern practices are. Having a historical perspective is interesting, and also know what best practices have stayed through the years. However, it's also important to know what simply isn't used anymore. I'm not sure that this is a good resource for a beginner, because it would teach them practices that aren't just o…
Maybe I will read it later, for now I stay with the ones suggested by other users. You can't understand which practices you should and shouldn't follow unless you are an expert
Yeah, that makes sense. I think the value of this particular text is that it teaches some of the underlying architectural principles, but truthfully, you probably won't be making those sorts of decisions until later in your career (unless you end up working at a really small shop).
For now, just focusing on the basics of HTML/CSS and especially JS will get you going well enough, and those will all be applicable in web work no matter what specialization you choose.
Those are what we normally consider frontend technologies (though JS can also be used on the backend). If you also want to learn the backend side, having some frontend knowledge still never hurts, if only so you can work with the frontend people better.
This text might be worth circling back to later in your career, once you start considering architectural patterns. But for now you have a lot of other great suggestions :)
Re: Ask HN: Best books to learn web development?
#16You don't need to search SEO spam for that stuff; ChatGPT knows it. I think Vite and React would be a good place to branch out to.
Re: Ask HN: Best books to learn web development?
#17A textbook which gives a good introduction to Web Development is: 1) Fundamentals of Web Development (Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar). I have the 2nd Ed but the 3rd Ed is out and is more contemporary. Specific books for HTML and CSS are: 1) HTML and CSS - The Comprehensive Guide (decent contemporary introduction) 2) CSS in Depth 3) CSS The Definite Guide - 5th Ed - Reference Specific books for JavaScript. 1) Javascr…
I'd probably followup with one of Souder's books, "High Performand Websites" and "Even Faster Websites" both will cover issues of some common issues you may experience and the importance of metrics and measuring for actual performance issues.
Although today, a dependency graph is more invaluable for modern web apps... Odds are your project is bringing in some massive/slow dependencies.
Re: Ask HN: Best books to learn web development?
#18Caveat to most of the answers so far - you can read Javascript books until you're blue in the face, you need to build stuff as much as possible.
I think that both are important... building stuff helps you understand how pieces fit together. Reading on the language can help you understand how to use features of the language (instead of using a library for something largely in the box).
Re: Ask HN: Best books to learn web development?
#19This might not be considered hip and modern any more, but I think there's still a lot of good fundamentals described, and well-written: http://philip.greenspun.com/seia/
This seems like an interesting resource for people who already work in the industry and know what the modern practices are. Having a historical perspective is interesting, and also know what best practices have stayed through the years. However, it's also important to know what simply isn't used anymore. I'm not sure that this is a good resource for a beginner, because it would teach them practices that aren't just o…
While I mostly agree... there's something to be said for a simpler, server-driven stack. HTMX is particularly interesting as a point for server driven integration(s). Many (most) apps are for internalized use at a given company... there's a lot of corporate development and most of these applications can scale perfectly fine with a relatively simple stack backed by a traditional RDBMS.
It's usually somewhere between 10k users and 1m users where the rules change entirely and you need to start looking to more modern/advanced approaches. 10k is kind of arbitrary, because you can do some really stupid things with a traditional rdbms with sql.
Re: Ask HN: Best books to learn web development?
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
This seems like an interesting resource for people who already work in the industry and know what the modern practices are. Having a historical perspective is interesting, and also know what best practices have stayed through the years. However, it's also important to know what simply isn't used anymore. I'm not sure that this is a good resource for a beginner, because it would teach them practices that aren't just o…
While I mostly agree... there's something to be said for a simpler, server-driven stack. HTMX is particularly interesting as a point for server driven integration(s). Many (most) apps are for internalized use at a given company... there's a lot of corporate development and most of these applications can scale perfectly fine with a relatively simple stack backed by a traditional RDBMS. It's usually somewhere between 1…
Sure, nothing wrong with a simple server-side stack. But even then, you probably wouldn't write it (today) by spinning up Microsoft SQL Server on a bare-metal machine so that your sysadmin can maintain its records with MS Access, then writing a bespoke CMS by creating your own prepared SQL statements from scratch, all while making sure your designer knows Frontpage and that you have a WAP version ready to roll out soon.
It's not that the principles are invalid these days, but that the specific examples and techniques mentioned in that text are now often done with different tooling. Significantly, a lot the low-level stuff has also been replaced with higher-level, industry-standard abstractions (which embody many standard best practices that might otherwise take an individual years to learn and polish), building upon the lessons and mistakes learned over the decades. This text doesn't really clarify what is a long-lasting architectural principle and what was just a fashion trend of the day and now obsolete.
Realistically, I think new devs coming into the field these days are likely to first encounter those abstractions (whether it's HTMX or Next) before understanding the history of why they exist (and what their tradeoffs are). Those architectural tradeoffs are important to learn at some point, but usually those decisions are not left to the newcomers (in a sane company) and also should be taught in the context of modern tooling and decisions, not software that was common two decades ago.
Like important questions these days might be (as you said) what do we do on the server vs client JS (or rehydration), what do we outsource to a cloud (which clouds?), what do we containerize or not, how do we deal with HTTPS and mobile and cross-platform (web/iOS/Android), etc. Not "what is the best log parser for Apache" or "should we use MS SQL because it works better with Access". In some companies, it might also be "which off-the-shelf CMS best fits our use case" vs "Is C# or Java or more appropriate for our backend?"
If someone wants to take the time to highlight the specific, still-relevant sections of that text, I think it could be worthwhile. But otherwise, without that differentiation, it's just kinda a minefield for newcomers.