In this article, we suggest you taking a look at the best JavaScript books that might help you become a better JS developer. It doesn’t matter whether you are an experienced JS programmer or you have just started this journey, the books listed below are quite universal, therefore everybody is able to suck an advantage out of them.

Each book is unique and introduces its own approaches of mastering the JavaScript language, we encourage you to find out which one fits you the best to facilitate your studying process.

So, let’s get down to our JS books marathon.

JavaScript: The Good Parts 1st Edition

We cannot help agreeing that there no is an impeccable programming language which does not have any weak spot. However, JavaScript is the one which is known for having more than the majority of other programming languages do due to the fact that it was created in haste without being refined. But at the same time, it would be reckless of us to drive it into oblivion, because it actually possesses a subset of outstanding features that can be applied to write an efficient as and fairly extensible code. Thus, JavaScript: The Good Parts sheds light upon these amazing aspects of the language which you take advantage out of.

In fact, the author of the book, Douglas Crockford, enjoys consideration of many developers within the programming community. He states that there is an abundant number of fantastic ideas that make JavaScript worth applying. Among them you can find loose typing, dynamic objects, functions, expressive object literal notation. However, as we have already mentioned not every single JavaScript idea is a good idea. You might have already heard of the programming model which is based on global variables.

However, there was a certain moment when JavaScript gained its popularity despite a number of defects it included. When Java applets didn’t manage to live up to our expectations, JavaScript sneaked in and came into wide usage as a default language of the Web. So, JavaScript: The Good Parts highlights all the worth-applying elements of JavaScript that you can take into account while coding.

Consequently, having read the book, you will be able to utilize the subset of extremely utile and efficient JavaScript components as well as to avoid the usage of those bad parts which distort your competence. However, if you are in the pursuit of bad parts, we recommend you to look for another JavaScript book.

JavaScript: The Good Parts provides you with a precious material on how to code in a efficient and effective manner. This book presents JavaScript as a formidable, elegant language that you are able to apply in object libraries or simply configuring AJAX. Use it, in case you are willing to make the most of the good parts.

Let’s take a look what its readers think about the book:

Download / Buy JavaScript: The Good Parts Book

Head First JavaScript 1st Edition

We are delighted to present another JavaScript book that is rather popular among JavaScript developers. Head First JavaScript 1st Edition will help master the language in a way that you will find rather engaging. The fact that Head First takes care of its readers and tries to do its best to make sure you will learn how to program, off and on beats other JavaScript books. It provides a great variety of visuals and offers a brain-friendly content, so you will not fall asleep while studying a new material. Basically, having read Head First JavaScript 1st Edition you open new doors for dynamic web applications in your programmer experience. The book teaches you how to write a code from scratch, ensuring unique and interactive web pages which you can easily create on your own. No necessity to steal somebody’s code. The book will give you a fishing-rod, instead of providing you few fish. To be honest, it might be a great leap for you, in case you already know HTML and CSS, because it can make you a powerful web-developer.

Head First JavaScript 1st Edition is considered as being a book of a profound source of information since it covers not only intermediate level of programming, but is rather comprehensive, touching upon from variables to looping, etc. It explains to you how browsers and the code you have written can communicate with one another, emphasizing on what you should do to optimize the communication process. Besides, you will learn why there is no necessity to preoccupy with such common problems as overloading, casting, or polymorphism while coding in JavaScript. And finally, you’ll be given information on how to correctly apply Document Object Model to perform some web page alterations in an appropriate manner.

So, by purchasing the book, you will be able to make your first steps in programming JavaScript or get a handle on working with complex programming concepts as well. No matter what kind of expertise you’ve got, you will definitely find something utile to improve your programming skills.

In case you are ready to begin your JavaScript journey, don’t put it off till tomorrow, since we never know what tomorrow might bring to us.

Readers’ opinion:

Download / Buy Head First JavaScript Book

JavaScript: The Definitive Guide: Activate Your Web Pages (Definitive Guides)

JavaScript: The Definitive Guide has been teaching web developers to program since 1996. Currently, there have been 6 editions already, each covering the relevant for a particular period of time topics, going in line with their peculiarities. The book thoroughly explains the principal features of the language as well as client-side APIs.

As regards the most recent version of the book, i.e. the 6th edition, it discloses such HTML5 and ECMAScript 5 in rather detailed manner. Besides, the author provides the readers with outstanding web development practices that are being applied by great developers. Apart from it, JavaScript: The Definitive Guide touches upon jQuery and its main features as well as server side JavaScript for you to be armed with strong JavaScript programming skills.

The book is rather universal, therefore it doesn’t matter that much whether you have experience in JavaScript or not, because even if you have, you’ll be able to leverage your expertise.

So, if you are willing to create awesome web applications, JavaScript: The Definitive Guide will be an indispensable assistant in showing you the best way to do so.

Readers’ opinion:

Download / Buy JavaScript: The Definitive Guide: Activate Your Web Pages

JavaScript and JQuery: Interactive Front-End Web Development 1st Edition

Let us introduce you to another JavaScript book that you might find quite utile for an engaging front-end as well as diverse web applications development – JavaScript and jQuery: Interactive Front-End web Development 1st Edition. With its assistance, you will be able to learn fundamental programming concepts and the principal JavaScript elements, thus giving you an amazing chance to start writing your personal scripts, even if you have never had JavaScript programming experience.

As you might have guessed, the book also provides material on jQuery features for you to learn how you can simplify the writing script process. However, in order to be able to get a handle on it, you should have a good understanding what JavaScript is designed for and its principal functioning.

The book is designed in a way that you could learn something new without getting bored. Therefore, the creators provide detailed descriptions on syntax and complex concepts, but in a reader-friendly manner, using different diagrams as well as other visuals.

Consequently, having read JavaScript and jQuery: Interactive Front-end Web Development 1st Edition, you will be able to apply AJAX for updating your page content, to write scripts from scratch as well as utilize the existing ones, to use a great deal of JavaScript APIs, and jQuery plugins, and to enjoy coding in JavaScript. Go head for getting a powerful tool for your web development expertise.

Readers’ opinion:

Download / Buy JavaScript and JQuery: Interactive Front-End Web Development Book

Eloquent JavaScript: A Modern Introduction to Programming 2nd Edition

It’s not a surprise that JavaScript can be found scarcely in every contemporary web application. Moreover, due to its simplicity yet availability of powerful features, it enjoys consideration among developers of all ranks. The language itself is capable of creating decent full-scale applications, you should just master it.

The book becomes your personal guide into the world of JavaScript, explaining to you with the help of great examples the fundamentals of coding in an effective and proper way. Thus, right from the start, the author of Eloquent JavaScript, 2nd Edition, Marijn Haverbeke combines theory along with time-proven practice for you to get started with writing your personal programs.

While reading chapter by chapter, you will be able to get a handle on fundamental components of programming since the book offers you a detailed explanation on syntax, data structure, clarifies what you should do to organize your code by applying the techniques of object-oriented as well as functional programming, provides a piece of advice on scripting the browser and making basic web apps. Besides, the book makes sure you know how you can use Document Object Model in an effective way for you to be able to easily interact with browsers.

So, this last edition of Eloquent JavaScript is an amazing source of information on all the modern JavaScript-related topics to keep up with the contemporary tendencies of web application development.

Readers’ opinion:

Download / Buy Eloquent JavaScript: A Modern Introduction to Programming Book

You Don’t Know JS

You Don’t Know JS, written by Kyle Simpson, is a series of great books that shade light upon various pitfalls as well as tiny yet crucial features of JavaScript language. We can undoubtedly state that there is no other books similar to this series. Even highly experienced developers that have been programming JS for long years say that You Don’t Know Java contains some material that they hadn’t seen before.

The Definitive Guide, as we have already mentioned above, is renowned for its deep insight into the world of JS language, however, still it cannot compare to the profoundness of You Don’t Know Java. In case you are expecting from this book to teach you software architecture and design principles, we suggest you looking up some other JS books. However, if you want to become a skilfull JavaScript developer that knows the deepness of the language, we encourage you to emerge in the unknown to master JavaScript.

Readers’ opinion:

Download / Buy You Don’t Know JS Book

A Smarter Way to Learn JavaScript

Let us present another JavaScript book A Smarter Way to Learn JavaScript. In fact, the  name was given due to its particular approach to teaching its readers the programming language. If you have never had programming experience, there is no need to worry since the book comprehensively explains to you how to master JavaScript, starting from variables and strings, and getting to more advanced concepts like constructors or prototypes. So, reading the book, gradually, you will be able to become a powerful web developer. Even you you are not a novice to programming, you might skip the chapters, getting to those topics you are not confident in. Thus, we can easily call A Smarter Way to Learn JavaScript rather universal, satisfying the needs of both the oldies as well as newcomers to JavaScript.

Apart from it, we would like to mention that the authors of the book took into account the specific features of our brain, creating reader-friendly chapters that do not burden you with a huge amount of text that you have to process, but rather provide you with small portions of information that can be better perceived. Furthermore, we all know that programming has become quite popular around the whole world nowadays, therefore the creators thought it would be foolish of them to utilize technical language with lots of big words. Instead, they wanted to make sure that people coming from different backgrounds could easily understand the book and learn JS.

Besides offering you various coding examples and strong visuals, A Smarter Way to Learn JavaScript provides you with the opportunity to exercise everything you learn there on a free interactive website, each time you finish a book’s chapter. According to a cognitive survey, the result of the approach when a student can practically apply what he/she has just learnt, increases his/her retention to a dramatic scale. Even if you at first you won’t code in a correct manner, there is no need to get preoccupied since you are given an infinite number of second chances to perform some alterations to make work properly.

Consequently, instead of making you read tons of heavy texts which is a common phenomenon in modern science, this particular book does just the opposite, taking into consideration imperfect human information perception abilities. No more need in big words, but rather in great actions.

However, the author recommends to repeatedly do the available exercises since at first glance you might think that you have already got a handle on a certain topic, but in the end it turns out that you still lack some expertise of that particular topic. Carry on doing the exercises, until you will be able to say that you are confident you know the topic well. As they say “Practice makes perfect”. And this book offers you a lot of practice. There are 1750 interactive exercises for you to apply the recently learnt material.

In short, the book, as you might have already guessed is a great source of well-organized  JavaScript material in combination with a huge amount of practical tasks. A Smarter Way to Learn Java has done its best to help you learn the programming language, now it rests with you to actually master it.

Readers’ opinion:

Download / Buy A Smarter Way to Learn JavaScript Book

Effective JavaScript: 68 Specific Ways to Harness the Power of JavaScript 1st Edition

You might have already heard of Effective JavaScript and might know that its main objective is to offer you an attractive journey to the deepness of the JavaScript language. Thus, it would better if you had previous experience in programming since a novice to JS might find the book a little bit too much details.

Firstly, it’s impossible to leave behind the experience of the author, David Herman, a widely known developer who has worked for many years in the JavaScript standardization committee of Ecma. He knows all the pitfalls as well as various amazing features that you might have never heard of and is willing to share them with you. That is why, in his book he picks the best practices and techniques used in JavaScript so you could take the full advantage of the expertise of outstanding JS developers to create your own reliable and maintainable programs.

From the first chapters of the book, you will be able to get a handle on floating point type which, as you know, is a kinda JavaScript peculiarity as well as other specific features of the language such as semicolon and coercions insertion. Having read the book, you will find out the best ways to work with functions, arrays, concurrency, etc.

Effective JavaScript covers the following:

Apart from providing you with readers’ opinion, we thought it would be nice for you to know what outstanding developers think of the book:

Readers’ opinion:

Download / Buy Effective JavaScript: 68 Specific Ways to Harness the Power of JavaScript Book

Node.js in Action

What will you learn useful from this book?

Node.js in Action is a great resource for you to figure what are Node’s principal features as well as how to apply them. It’s totally okay, if you have never coded in Node because the book covers the fundamentals of Node such as HTTP/HTTPS or Connect/Express middleware. Therefore, having read Node.js in Action, you won’t find any difficulty in setting up your own Node’s environment and installing diverse extensions that have been developed by its community. The distinctively describes what asynchronous I/O is and how to properly apply it to build real-time apps.

Certainly, while talking about the book, we cannot help mentioning the names of its authors: Mike Cantelon, Marc Harter, T.J. Holowaychuk, and Nathan Rajlich. To many of you they are quite known due to the contribution they have made to the development of the framework.

To make a long story short, with the assistance of Node.js in Action you will be able to learn how to create high-performance and scalable web applications by using Node.js.

Readers’ opinion:

Download / Buy Node.js in Action Book

Conclusion

So, we hope you have found this article utile and it will come in handy when you decide which book you want to purchase to improve your programming skills. However, we would like to highlight that during the studying process everything boils down to our motivation, therefore we do wish you a lot of it for you to become an outstanding developer like those ones mentioned in the post.

In case, you happen to have any question, we would be extremely glad to help you, by providing you with as full answer as possible.

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