Ask HN: Best books to learn web development? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Best books to learn web development?

#31

Post by p4ul » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 10:30 PM UTC

I know you asked specifically about books, but I can’t help but recommend the two online courses that Josh Comeau makes available. I have found both the “CSS for JavaScript Developers” and the “Joy of React” courses to be absolutely phenomenal!

Josh’s teaching style is exceptional, and the courses’ exercises challenge you to work just at the edge of your abilities. I cannot recommend these courses enough!!

https://www.joshwcomeau.com/courses/

Re: Ask HN: Best books to learn web development?

#32

Post by rabbits_2002 » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 10:48 PM UTC

I loved Eloquent Javascript, I even bought a printed copy. Mozilla also has amazing documentation in all aspects of web dev.

Re: Ask HN: Best books to learn web development?

#33

Post by knight17 » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 10:53 PM UTC

lastofus wrote: post #28

One of my favorite free online books is https://internetingishard.netlify.app/ It does a great job at explaining intermediate/advanced caveats and gotchas along the way.

Excellent. Thank you for sharing.

Re: Ask HN: Best books to learn web development?

#34

Post by beeburrt » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 11:12 PM UTC

css-tricks has good stuff:

https://css-tricks.com/

And I like this Principles of Object-Oriented Javascript book by Nicholas Zakas even though it's a little dated (example: its claim that there are no classes in JavaScript)

https://nostarch.com/oojs

And I love everything by Kevin Powell:

https://www.youtube.com/@KevinPowell

edit* I want to add the The Odin Project has a ton of good material:

https://www.theodinproject.com

Re: Ask HN: Best books to learn web development?

#35

Post by aradox66 » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 11:41 PM UTC

If you're starting from scratch and interested in python, walk through Miguel grinberg's mega tutorial from start to finish, implementing everything yourself along the way. It's very good and you'll have a thorough understanding of the basics at that point. I started working professionally building simple web apps immediately after working through that.

When youre ready to go galaxy brained, "Designing Data-Intensive Applications" is the standard

Re: Ask HN: Best books to learn web development?

#36

Post by akomtu » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 12:09 AM UTC

Do a side project that makes some use of WebLLM and upload it to github. While figuring it out, you'll learn web dev and also learn a marketable skill.

Re: Ask HN: Best books to learn web development?

#37

Post by snihalani » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 2:18 AM UTC

I recently started doing this as well. I searched HN and landed on https://learn.shayhowe.com/ . Very useful link

Re: Ask HN: Best books to learn web development?

#38

Post by darepublic » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 2:22 AM UTC

A long time ago I read secrets of the JavaScript ninja. I feel like perhaps that is outdated though. I would probably recommend eloquent JavaScript at this point or googling for online materials

Re: Ask HN: Best books to learn web development?

#39

Post by saluki » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 3:09 AM UTC

The head first series are great. https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/head-first-html/9781449...

It's not super advanced but gives you a great foundation and you learn by doing.

After that it's best to pick out a challenging project you want to build for yourself and tackle that.

Once you have a good foundation in css I'd recommend checking out Tailwind CSS and Tailwind UI.

Re: Ask HN: Best books to learn web development?

#40

Post by cryptos » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 6:09 AM UTC

You asked for JS (JavaScript) and you got a lot of suggestions for books or other resources about that language. But I suggest to not spend too much time with JS and learn TypeScript instead. It will make your life easier, because the compiler helps a lot - especially if your projects grow. The official documentation is very good and should be sufficient for almost everything that you would ever do with TypeScript. https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/