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You Don't Know JavaScript Book Series

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Re: You Don't Know JavaScript Book Series

#71

Post by raylan_givens »

Silhouette wrote: post #68
_getify wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I found very little to suggest Just curious what parts you looked at? Did you glance at the table of contents, or did you read full chapters? I certainly tried to reveal in every chapter several different things that, in my professional experience teaching JS to teams of developers, are commonly misunderstood or under-understood. If you had any specific feedback on what I could have done better to live up to the ti…

Just curious what parts you looked at? Did you glance at the table of contents, or did you read full chapters? I skimmed through pretty much all of "Scope & Closures". I also looked through the first few chapters of "this & Object Prototypes" to see whether they were any better. If you had any specific feedback on what I could have done better to live up to the title, tone, and mission of the book series, I'd be appr…

It seems that you are offput by his title in a way that you feel he is personally challenging your knowledge and experience with JavaScript. I would guess that when he was writing and naming this series, he did not have someone with 20 years experience in mind. Seems like the series is geared towards someone with moderate experience.

Re: You Don't Know JavaScript Book Series

#72

Post by michaelchisari »

colund wrote: post #14

I posted this link after having read the author's comment to a one star review on Amazon: "Kyle Simpson8 months ago Report Abuse I can assure you, my goal of splitting up the content into a book series had ZERO to do with making more money. It's actually quite the opposite. One of the things I hate the most about tech books is that I spend $35-50 on a big book of which there's only a few chapters I actually care abou…

I'll be honest, I'm working through a React book right now, and there's so many additional subject chapters that, while useful, would be better off spun off into their own books. I found the first 2/3 of the book immensely useful, but now it feels like I'm slogging through to finish it (just for the sake of finishing it).

Maybe splitting things up into very self-contained contexts makes a lot more sense than writing another tome.

Re: You Don't Know JavaScript Book Series

#73

Post by woah »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #56

Here's the thing, I do know Javascript pretty well after reading Crockford [1], Braithwaite [2], and Javascript Garden [3]. Much of the behavior of the language is simply too subtle and failure-prone to bother with, especially when working on projects that aren't composed entirely of world-class JS devs (e.g. every project ever). In its full expressiveness, Javascript yields code that simply does not do what you thin…

What subtle counterintuitive behavior are you talking about? The only things I can think of are == and if (0).

Re: You Don't Know JavaScript Book Series

#74

Post by Silhouette »

raylan_givens wrote: post #71
Silhouette wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious what parts you looked at? Did you glance at the table of contents, or did you read full chapters? I skimmed through pretty much all of "Scope & Closures". I also looked through the first few chapters of "this & Object Prototypes" to see whether they were any better. If you had any specific feedback on what I could have done better to live up to the title, tone, and mission of the book series, I'd be appr…

It seems that you are offput by his title in a way that you feel he is personally challenging your knowledge and experience with JavaScript. I would guess that when he was writing and naming this series, he did not have someone with 20 years experience in mind. Seems like the series is geared towards someone with moderate experience.

I don't think the title is the big issue here. I don't think it's good, and clearly it does put some people off with its tone, but as you say, maybe at least some of those people aren't the intended target audience.

My stronger reservation is that these books have a lot of loose writing and give so much space over to asides or describing bad practices that someone who wasn't so experienced might still not know JS by the end, having missed the wood for the trees.

Re: You Don't Know JavaScript Book Series

#75

Post by zxcvcxz »

woah wrote: post #73
acjohnson55 wrote: post #56

Here's the thing, I do know Javascript pretty well after reading Crockford [1], Braithwaite [2], and Javascript Garden [3]. Much of the behavior of the language is simply too subtle and failure-prone to bother with, especially when working on projects that aren't composed entirely of world-class JS devs (e.g. every project ever). In its full expressiveness, Javascript yields code that simply does not do what you thin…

What subtle counterintuitive behavior are you talking about? The only things I can think of are == and if (0).

I don't get it either. The only one that got me was that you have to scale some decimal numbers to whole numbers to multiply them.

    0.1 * 0.2 //0.020000000000000004
But this has never caused issue for me except when tried to make a "prime number finder" when I first started using it.

If I was going to build some stat site with a whole bunch of scientific data, I'd probably break out the python. IMO JavaScript is just the best language to work with if you're coding web sites or web applications (and probably prototyping custom UIs for anything). Plus you can use multiple languages server side easily, so use the right tool for the right job.

Re: You Don't Know JavaScript Book Series

#76

Post by mcantelon »

imdsm wrote: post #21
colund wrote: post #14

I posted this link after having read the author's comment to a one star review on Amazon: "Kyle Simpson8 months ago Report Abuse I can assure you, my goal of splitting up the content into a book series had ZERO to do with making more money. It's actually quite the opposite. One of the things I hate the most about tech books is that I spend $35-50 on a big book of which there's only a few chapters I actually care abou…

Valid points. Shouldn't have fed the guy but valid response none the less. 200 pages on a subject versus two or three 30 page chapters? Good call!

Small books would also make updates easier (if some APIs referenced in a book change, for example). Seems like a good way to go.

Re: You Don't Know JavaScript Book Series

#77

Post by seasoup »

Wow, everyone here seems to be really put off by this title. I thought it was clever and funny. Title's are meant to grab attention and drive sales, and secondarily to also inform the potential reader of the topic.

This title caught my attention, so first purpose, check.

I think the book is positioned for beginner to mid-career engineers working with JavaScript that want to do a deeper dive and based on the title is presented in an irreverent and funny tone. If it is those things, it accomplishes #2.

Great title. I haven't read the book, so I don't have any opinion on it beyond that, but can we try and take things a -tad- less personally?

Re: You Don't Know JavaScript Book Series

#78

Post by rtpg »

woah wrote: post #73
acjohnson55 wrote: post #56

Here's the thing, I do know Javascript pretty well after reading Crockford [1], Braithwaite [2], and Javascript Garden [3]. Much of the behavior of the language is simply too subtle and failure-prone to bother with, especially when working on projects that aren't composed entirely of world-class JS devs (e.g. every project ever). In its full expressiveness, Javascript yields code that simply does not do what you thin…

What subtle counterintuitive behavior are you talking about? The only things I can think of are == and if (0).

If you try to combine object methods that use 'this' with functional programming-style code, you're in for a bad surprise

Re: You Don't Know JavaScript Book Series

#79

Post by matt_ »

michaelchisari wrote: post #72
colund wrote: post #14

I posted this link after having read the author's comment to a one star review on Amazon: "Kyle Simpson8 months ago Report Abuse I can assure you, my goal of splitting up the content into a book series had ZERO to do with making more money. It's actually quite the opposite. One of the things I hate the most about tech books is that I spend $35-50 on a big book of which there's only a few chapters I actually care abou…

I'll be honest, I'm working through a React book right now, and there's so many additional subject chapters that, while useful, would be better off spun off into their own books. I found the first 2/3 of the book immensely useful, but now it feels like I'm slogging through to finish it (just for the sake of finishing it). Maybe splitting things up into very self-contained contexts makes a lot more sense than writing…

What is the book?

Re: You Don't Know JavaScript Book Series

#80

Post by woah »

rtpg wrote: post #78
woah wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What subtle counterintuitive behavior are you talking about? The only things I can think of are == and if (0).

If you try to combine object methods that use 'this' with functional programming-style code, you're in for a bad surprise

Yea, when people try to rebuild all the fanciful embellishments of classic OOP GUI programming in JS, they're going to have a hard time. Unfortunately I've had to maintain this kind of code in the past. Don't use 'this'. I'm afraid that the addition of the 'class' keyword in es6 will make this tendency worse in some programmers. Along with block scoping, it's a feature lobbied for by people who don't actually code much JS.
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