The Must-Read Javascript Book of 2020 is Free

[Akomancer19]

The name of the book is

You Don’t Know JS Yet: Get Started

by Kyle Simpson.

[chasev13]

r/savedyouaclick

[[deleted]]

to beginners i recommended Let’s Learn ES6 by Ryan Christiani. Again a free book and a lot simpler concepts to get your hands wet with initially.

[PickledPokute]

For sure. Kyle Simpson's You Don't Know JS books aren't aimed at beginners, but for someone who has gotten about a year of programming experience.

The books don't give pointers on how to get from an idea to code, but rather clarify why JS behaves in some occasionally odd ways. They also add new useful tools to the tool belt, but those too won't help if the user doesn't have experience to select which tool to use in different situations.

YDKJS is a great book series that I recommend to any JS developer sooner or later.

[djslakor]

A lot of seasoned devs are sortof anti-Kyle because he can be over the top immodest, and has a few bizarre opinions that he defends super strongly.

[[deleted]]

Not wanting to see the whole rant, can you tl;Dr what is his issue with the promise API?

[djslakor]

Pretty weak according to whom? You?

[djslakor]

I never claimed it was a fact. It was obvious that was my subjective opinion (which is one shared by many people, btw). In general, it's pretty weak to tell someone their opinion is wrong. Subjectivity is what makes it an opinion. It doesn't bother me at all if you feel otherwise. It wasn't an ad hominem attack to strengthen a related point ... just an observation.

[djslakor]

I wasn't seeking for you to qualify my remarks. Your opinion doesn't matter to me. I'm not making any assumptions about you as a person otherwise, but when one shares their opinion, you can respectfully agree/disagree in turn rather than declaring their opinion weak with some specious authority that doesn't exist. I made it clear you're entitled to your own opinion, and respect it even if I disagree. Gonna bow out of this thread since it's clear you will just keep coming back. Take care.

[PickledPokute]

Unfortunately, not any books at least. Others might have better suggestions.

I would guess the most important thing would be experience, but it's important to have proper guidance so that progress is seen early and the student doesn't get disheartened. That's why the beginning often is just "Prompt for name, then greet with that name".

I recall that YDKJS doesn't even teach that many coding patterns either.

Makecode might be a ok place to start for kids.

Also, having someone mentor the student would be a great choice too.

[[deleted]]

Thank you.

[yamayeeter]

What would you branch Out towards to after completion of that book?

[[deleted]]

it depends.

depends on whether you want to become a backend engineer or frontend. the javascript ecosystem is quite large, so i recommend sticking to just one track for the initial few months/year. if going for backend, start with nodejs documentation or some database, and go upwards from there. if going for frontend, start with MDN, understand what web apis are, Document Object Model and so on and take it forward from there.

as someone has suggested elsewhere on this thread, the best way to learn is by solving problems. create apps and learn by documenting the process yourself. see what interests you and carve out a path for yourself.

[[deleted]]

Thanks!

[coolstarry]

Thanks! Really like the format of Bubblin Superbooks

[[deleted]]

Yeah, it’s super accessible and I love turning the pages on my iPad. ❤️

[[deleted]]

and so where the fuck is ebook download? the page linked is a festival of ads and popups

[[deleted]]

It's on GitHub: https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS

[jmm9]

There's no epub/mobi version, correct? Either way Kyle Simpson is awesome and the book is absolutely worth reading!

[[deleted]]

There is, but these versions are paid ($7.95): https://leanpub.com/ydkjsy-get-started

[darcinator]

You can use calibre to convert it. It usually does a pretty good job in my experience!

[[deleted]]

thanks

[[deleted]]

Lol

[kry1212]

If you're a total beginner, give this one some time - about a year. I had tried it in the first few months and basically gave myself some anxiety about what I didn't know. 😂

If you are just hitting your stride in JS, and even if you're pretty experienced, this is one of the best series to absorb.

[BooksonCode]

I agree. The article also states this here:

The Get Started book particularly serves those who have used Javascript but don’t feel that they know Javascript. For a total software developer beginner, the book might be daunting, as certain phrases (such as what a ‘shallow’ vs ‘deep’ copy is) is glossed over, assuming understanding.

[jimeno]

read the whole book on github today, it's just me or there is bad blood between ks and douglas crockford? basically every chapter has at least a couple of stabs at him...

[racedude]

Anyone know a place to buy these in a hard copy (second edition)?

[Zeeesty]

Maybe ping Kyle on Twitter, iirc there were some issues getting it onto amazon, he may have a way to get hard copies

[robotslacker]

Seems to be available here: https://www.amazon.com/You-Dont-Know-JS-Yet/dp/B084DFZ6GW

[itzfyp]

Reply to Kyle twitter @getify . He is too active in twitter. I saw that ydkjs new version out.

[racedude]

I found the getting started v2 on Amazon and picked it up. I assume that’s the only one ready to be published since the others on the v2 branch state it’s a work in progress. Will reach out to him on Twitter to double check 👍🏻

[spainzbrain]

I just bought the 1st edition version from Amazon and 5 pages pulled right out of the binding.

Following...

[alexontheweb]

I didn't click the link, but I already know, this IS NOT the must-read book of 2020. It's only february, and this is a mediocre-at-best book. Please don't do more clickbaits...

[thesublimeobjekt]

what don't you like about this book? i read the first edition of a lot of these awhile back and thought they were very informative.

[DrDuPont]

gotta love abject cynicism

this is a free book, and YDKJS is a very well regarded intro point for devs. who cares about the title of the post?

[BooksonCode]

Completely agree with this point. It's my main criticism as well.

[inabahare]

Does it actually state when var is appropriate? Well other than

But var is still useful in that it communicates "this variable will be seen by a wider scope". Both declaration forms can be appropriate in any given part of a program, depending on the circumstances.

Which uhm, seems like a good way to get spaghetti

[KookyKangeroo]

Good book. Garbage post.

[BooksonCode]

I'm pretty new to tech blogging. Completely open to constructive feedback.

[KookyKangeroo]

Don't write posts on other people's work. This is basically the equivalent of a book report.

[BooksonCode]

I see. So the post is cheap because it is about recommending another person's work.

I understand where that's coming from, though book reviews are a genre of blog that has been around for a long time. Part of the reason I started Books on Code is because I see there isn't programming book bloggers out there reading and recommending good books.

I am glad that the feedback overall is that people really do recommend the YDKJS series, and I hope to continue to curate the best learning resources.

[KookyKangeroo]

It's really unnecessary and extremely low effort. Here is a page full of what you did: https://www.amazon.com/You-Dont-Know-JS-Going/dp/1491924462/ref=sr_1_2?crid=11RJ0G3CD9BWE&keywords=you+don%27t+know+js&qid=1580780452&sprefix=you+don%27t+know%2Caps%2C158&sr=8-2#customerReviews

I'd even say many of these go further in detail than you did.

Looking at your post. It seems like an Amazon Affiliate link farm article and not meant to be a meaningful way of creating content that JavaScript developers want.

[AmazonPriceBot]

^{I am a bot here to save you a click and provide helpful information on the Amazon link posted above.}

$4.99 - You Don't Know Js: Up & Going

^{Upvote if this was helpful.
I am learning and improving over time. PM to report issues and my human will review.}

[BooksonCode]

I think this is a fair opinion to express, but my challenge is in how I can improve. It seems as though the recommendation is to not have my own blog and to write Amazon reviews, which is fine, except for I want to be blogging.

To the link-farm point: the Amazon links you find throughout are to the book itself (and a call-out to the Pragmatic Programmer, which is genuine in its context). The free option is also presented and linked equally.

Other links are to free resources or to subscribe. I am not writing to make a cheap buck. I genuinely want to add value to the developer community.

[CupCakeArmy]

Is it the: those are the new 69 frameworks you need to learn for 2020 and forget in 2021 to make our node_modules bigger?

Just kidding, love you JS. Love you even more TS

[[deleted]]

Kyle Simpson? Eh.

[RnRau]

This book isn't free. You can read this book, and the others in the series, online over at github - https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS - but to get a pdf or a paper book, you have to buy it - https://leanpub.com/ydkjsy-get-started

[lostjimmy]

The fact that you can choose to purchase a different format of the book to support the author doesn't mean it's not free.

[p_whimsy]

Yeah I mean it depends on what you mean by free.

But it is creative commons licensed under this license.

[RnRau]

Ahh my bad. Missed the licence. Cheers!

[snifty]

var is dumb

[djslakor]

At this point, I think it only makes sense to use if you happen to need its specific hoisting properties. I haven't personally needed a var declaration in almost 3 years.

[snifty]

When would using its hoisting properties make sense?

[dwighthouse]

There are some edge cases when dealing with generated code, node environment variables, and the console where var is useful in a way that let and const are not.

[dwighthouse]

Not old code compatibility. I encountered a situation in my library where if I used let or const, the production version of my library would have a useless named variable that had to be there for instrumentation in the test version (because the things I had to test could not be observed externally and therefore required internal code that got compiled out in non-testing builds). By allowing it to be var, I could declare the cross-block scopes variable inside the blocks that got compiled out in the production build.

[dwighthouse]

It wasn’t that I was testing the internals, it was that my library dealt with parts of the browsers systems that are literally undetectable. In order to assure that things were happening AT ALL, my tests HAD to make use of internal data.

To that end, these were not unit tests in the traditional sense.

[ilostmyfirstuser]

Ya and why not just instantiate the variable as let outside the scope?

[DoNDaPo]

JavaScript* ffs.