The Little JavaScript Book (Ebook)
All you need to know about JavaScript (but never dared to ask).
Disclaimer: This repo holds the draft version of the book, not in sync with the final release. I'm not accepting pull requests here. Open an issue if you find errors or typos. Thanks a lot!
Ever dreamed of a JavaScript book focused on the "hard parts" while being beginner friendly? If you answered yes then you will love "The Little JavaScript Book".
Motivation
As much as I love "You don't know JS" and "Eloquent JavaScript" I feel there is the need for a book which takes the reader by hand, challenging enough, yet concise. The Little JavaScript book saw its light originally in italian as "Il Piccolo Libro di JavaScript" and soon a lot of fellow developers asked for an english version. What I did here however is not a 1 to 1 translation. "The Little JavaScript Book" is a creature on its own, with fresh contents and a different perspective.
In this book you'll learn the "hard parts" of JavaScript without the gimmicky packaging that comes with some tutorials, and most important without arid academic lucubration. It aims to be a concise reference, while never peeking too much into the JavaScript spec. Enjoy the reading!
What's in the book?
The book is organized in three parts. The first part covers the inner working of JavaScript engines and the "hard parts" of the language: closures, the prototype system, this and new. The second part of the book has a lot of practical exercises on the DOM while covering code organization and best practices.
Every chapter can be consumed as a stand-alone episode, tackling down a group of topics that in my mind played nicely together. In chapter 8, 9, 10, and 11 for example you'll build small features while touching Promises, DOM manipulation, JavaScript classes, localStorage, TypeScript, and more. Every chapter ends with quizzes and exercises, useful for making the concepts stick.
The third and last part contains solutions and hints for the exercises and future additions to the book. At the last minute I decided to add a chapter on TypeScript + JSDoc. TypeScript is gaining a lot of traction: more and more developers are switching from JavaScript to TS.
What's the difference between free and paid copy of the book?
The paid version has:
- quizzes and exercises at the end of every chapter
- a lot of tips and best practices
- future updates and fixes
- future bonus chapters
- a collection of JavaScript recipes
License & Copyright
The materials herein are all © 2020 Valentino Gagliardi.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 Unported License.