Effective JavaScript Book Review
January 5, 2013 in Book Reviews
Effective JavaScript by David Herman is the best JavaScript book I’ve ever read. It covers a wide range of important JavaScript concepts in 68 “items”. It is an excellent foundation for beginners, but it is also a great read for intermediate and advanced users. I consider myself a JavaScript expert and I learned many really cool things from the book.
It starts off talking about different ECMAScript versions and platforms. The first thing about JavaScript, it says is “Know Which JavaScript You Are Using.” It explains how to avoid “the bad parts” such as globals, `with` and `eval`.
Each of the 68 items are concise and ends with clear recommendations for your JavaScript code. There are many code examples–all following best practices and all are easy to understand.
Highlights: it covers the power and nuances of Functions and Object Prototypes, Arrays, plain objects and asynchronous logic. It also gives recommendation for creating simple, readable and user-friendly JavaScript libraries that follow the best coding practices.
My favorite part was the explanation of asynchronous sequencing and Promises and the problems they solve. I have always had a hard time totally grasping Promises, but now I get it!
I would highly recommend this book to all developers who use JavaScript. David Herman knows what he is talking about. He serves on Ecma TC39: the committee responsible for standardizing JavaScript.
aaronfrost said on January 13, 2013
When I found out what the title of his book was, I tweeted him and asked him why he couldn’t have come up with just one more. He lol’d and said that he didn’t mean to be off by one. He wrote down all his ideas and they simply totaled 68.
I told him that I still wished there was one more item, to make it hands down the best book of JS ever.