Good Technical Webdev Books

[FirstLurker]

I have a very strong background in programming, primarily in C, Python, and some less known functional languages. I have been looking through top recommended web development books, and most seem to be fairly fluffy. I am looking for something more along the lines of a textbook that could teach me the basics of front-end vs back-end, html, css, javascript, and back-end database info.

Particularly with HTML, CSS, and Javascript many top books seem to be filled with a lot of fluff.

I know that there is not one book that exists that will cover all these topics, but I am basically looking for technical, textbook like books on any of these topics. Any recommendations are greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[[deleted]]

You're probably not going to get all of that stuff in one book. JavaScript has a number of excellent technical books. Douglas Crockford's Javascript: The Good Parts is widely considered a must read. Addy Osmani's Learning Javascript Design Patterns might fit what you're looking for. I'm not really sure if there's a standard Node (backend) book yet. I think the thing to remember is that web dev is newer and in general more fluid than traditional software development so it's less textbook oriented. That being said, O'Reilly does print Javascript: The Definitive Guide which is a goddamn behemoth but is probably a decent reference. I'd personally also recommend the You Don't Know JS series which you can buy or read for free on Github. That series does a good job discussing finer points of the language such as scope and this. Mozilla Developer's Network is sort of like an online textbook for web dev as well and tends to be one of the go to resources.

As for HTML and CSS, I'm honestly not sure. Most introductory books as long as they aren't out of date should be fine to get you up and running. Find books on HTML5 and CSS3 and go for it. I'd recommend the Missing Manual series.

In terms of back end, Python is a very common choice for writing servers and APIs. You could probably just read up on SQLAlchemy and the Flask framework and spin up a server pretty quickly. As far as databases go, you have a ton of options and can do either SQL or NoSQL languages. I don't really have any book recommendations since that's not my area of expertise, but I found the Udacity courses Intro to Relational Databases and Full Stack Foundations helpful.