Two great books about JavaScript

Date: November 25, 2014

Recently I read two great books about JavaScript: JavaScript: The Good Parts and Effective JavaScript: 68 Specific Ways to Harness the Power of JavaScript. Both are not for beginners, but rather for programmers who know some Object Oriented language (e.g., C#, Java or C++).

JavaScript: The Good Parts

JavaScript: The Good Parts - cover
Written by the "God Father of JavaScript": Douglas Crockford. This book is an overview of JavaScript language features that are different than in Object Oriented programming languages, such as C# or Java. Additionally, there is an overview of the good, and the bad parts of the language. What to avoid, and how. You can read it in a week (~200 pages).

In addition to JavaScript Good Parts, I recommend you to watch Crockford on JavaScript (mirror). You will learn not only about JavaScript but also about the history of programming languages. There is also JavaScript the Good Parts course by Douglas Crockford on Pluralsight. This course is focused only on JavaScript though.

Effective JavaScript: 68 Specific Ways to Harness the Power of JavaScript

Effective JavaScript - cover
I like this book even better than "The Good Parts". It contains very good examples that show specific aspects of the language. These examples combined with associated explanations make this book clear and very informative for me. What I like especially was the structure: short 68 problems with explanations, analysis, and examples. Also, not very long (~200 pages). If you can choose only one of the books described in this post, read this one.

Other JavaScript books

I would be very happy to hear from you about other JavaScript books that are worth (or not) reading. So far, besides mentioned books, I heard good things about:

Can you recommend some of them? Share your opinions in the comments.

Tags: books programming