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Eloquent JavaScript 4th edition (2024)

eloquentjavascript.net

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Re: Eloquent JavaScript 4th edition (2024)

#71

Post by synergy20 »

Sn0wCoder wrote: post #57
samtho wrote: post #38

This is, in my opinion, the book to use to learn JavaScript at more than a surface level. The only other materials I recommend as much (but for a different level of learner) are the “You don’t know JavaScript” in-depth book series. In 2015, I was consulting for a distance learning program, administered by a major California University, that wanted to replace their current textbook (one of those “Head First” O’Reilly…

One hundred percent agree on both this book and the “You don’t know JavaScript”. Both are free (search Kyle Simpson GitHub). I ended up buying the YDKJ first edition paperbacks but see the second edition of all of them are done or a work in progress. EJs is the one I tell my students to start with as IMO is more of a programming book that just happens to us JS. I can tell the ones that read it (it’s optional) and the…

YDKJ 2nd edition after first two parts the rest seems less actively worked on? hope the 2nd revision will be done soon.

Re: Eloquent JavaScript 4th edition (2024)

#72

Post by preommr »

OmarShehata wrote: post #5
dcre wrote: post #4

This is my favorite book about JS, and I always recommend it to people. It occurs to me for the first time that the lack of TypeScript might be a problem, because if I’m making recommendations to someone learning, I am definitely going to recommend they write TS instead of JS. On the other hand it may actually be helpful to learn the concepts in this book without the additional syntax overhead of type annotations, pl…

I very much concur that it is better NOT to introduce TS when explaining JS fundamentals. I've seen smart engineers with a C++ background get tripped up on and very confused working with TS, because it's not clear to them what concepts are "language fundamentals" and what concepts are "the TS transpiler". (Like expecting that just because you declared something as type X, that it guarantees at runtime it will always…

> I've seen smart engineers with a C++ background get tripped up on and very confused working with TS,

The idea that someone is good at another language so they'll automatically be good at another is a common misconception. In fact, they're likely to be worse because they're less likely to spend time trying to learn things from the ground up and less likely to write idiomatic code.

It's especially bad with js/ts because of it's popularity (so lots of new programmers that complain about how NaN doesn't equal itself), and because it's the defacto web language so lots of people are forced to use it as a secondary language that don't want to spend time learning it.

Re: Eloquent JavaScript 4th edition (2024)

#73

Post by williamstein »

z3t4 wrote: post #39

Someone asked about integer support in JavaScript. JS now supports BigInt! >2**57 144115188075855870 >2n**57n 144115188075855872n

And in some JavaScript engines (eg V8) bigint multiplication is asymptotically fast, unlike say the default CPython. It’s a very pleasant surprise if you happen to be a number theorist (say).

Re: Eloquent JavaScript 4th edition (2024)

#75

Post by pwb25 »

samtho wrote: post #38

This is, in my opinion, the book to use to learn JavaScript at more than a surface level. The only other materials I recommend as much (but for a different level of learner) are the “You don’t know JavaScript” in-depth book series. In 2015, I was consulting for a distance learning program, administered by a major California University, that wanted to replace their current textbook (one of those “Head First” O’Reilly…

yes, also javascript the good parts is really good(hehe) because it's more theoretical and there is not html or web stuff in it just the language

Re: Eloquent JavaScript 4th edition (2024)

#76

Post by TehShrike »

pwb25 wrote: post #75
samtho wrote: post #38

This is, in my opinion, the book to use to learn JavaScript at more than a surface level. The only other materials I recommend as much (but for a different level of learner) are the “You don’t know JavaScript” in-depth book series. In 2015, I was consulting for a distance learning program, administered by a major California University, that wanted to replace their current textbook (one of those “Head First” O’Reilly…

yes, also javascript the good parts is really good(hehe) because it's more theoretical and there is not html or web stuff in it just the language

How recently have you read it? I thought it was a worthwhile read when I first read it 12 years ago, but I picked it up to skim a couple years ago and was struck with how much of it was irrelevant for modern JS due to changes in the language spec.

Re: Eloquent JavaScript 4th edition (2024)

#77

Post by pwb25 »

TehShrike wrote: post #76
pwb25 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, also javascript the good parts is really good(hehe) because it's more theoretical and there is not html or web stuff in it just the language

How recently have you read it? I thought it was a worthwhile read when I first read it 12 years ago, but I picked it up to skim a couple years ago and was struck with how much of it was irrelevant for modern JS due to changes in the language spec.

Last time was 2017 I think, don't know if there is a big difference I use both new and old things

Re: Eloquent JavaScript 4th edition (2024)

#78

Post by skitter »

NlightNFotis wrote: post #68
ricardobeat wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a great explanation, but I've never heard the term 'binding' used to describe variables. It's usually reserved to function binding or bridge APIs like the DOM. The tricky thing is that "boxes" are the right abstraction for primitive values. After that you need to explain how references work, and that's pretty much the same 'tentacle' concept. This method spares the reader one step, but might cause confusion once…

"binding" is a PLT term, denoting the association between a name and a value. It's a higher level concept than the variable - a mutable binding is what people usually refer to as a variable, and an immutable binding is the correct term for what people refer to an "immutable variable" (an oxymoron, if you think about it).

Immutable variable isn't a oxymoron. It can still vary between instantiations. If you have (a)=>{const b = a}, b can have different values even though it can't be reassigned.

Re: Eloquent JavaScript 4th edition (2024)

#79

Post by mtalantikite »

samtho wrote: post #38

This is, in my opinion, the book to use to learn JavaScript at more than a surface level. The only other materials I recommend as much (but for a different level of learner) are the “You don’t know JavaScript” in-depth book series. In 2015, I was consulting for a distance learning program, administered by a major California University, that wanted to replace their current textbook (one of those “Head First” O’Reilly…

I remember reading the first edition back in maybe 2011 when I decided I should sit down and actually learn JavaScript beyond the superficial grasp I had of it from working on web things (mainly via Rails at the time). What a great book, I learned so much from it at the time. For years after, whenever anyone told me they wanted to learn programming, I told them to pick up this book as a first introduction to it. Plus, it was available for free on his website.

I've gotten rid of lots of old programming books over the years, but I've held on to my first edition copy of Eloquent Javascript. Lots of thanks to Marijn for writing this!

Re: Eloquent JavaScript 4th edition (2024)

#80

Post by svat »

MikeTheGreat wrote: post #58
svat wrote: post #14

I love this book, even since its first edition. It's very clear even on elementary stuff, e.g. see the section on bindings/variables: https://eloquentjavascript.net/02_program_structure.html#h-l... — avoids the pitfall of thinking of variables as “boxes”. I was trying to find what's new in the 4th edition, and following links from the author's website https://marijnhaverbeke.nl/ found this on Mastodon ( https://masto…

I'm curious - could you expand on why it's a pitfall to think of variables as boxes?

Because that's not how variables work in JavaScript/Python etc (though it may be fine for say C++ in the case of value types and copy constructors). For example:

I'm typing on phone so for a quick example:

    let a = [];
    let b = a;
    a.push(1);
and consider the value of b now (or the fact that we could write "const" above because the binding is constant, even though we mutate the value). Or see the equivalent for Python by Ned Batchelder, which has more examples and elaboration: https://nedbatchelder.com/text/names1.html
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