Modern JavaScript for the Impatient

If you know another language already: this book is exactly what you hope it is.
This book does a great job at highlighting how JS is different from some languages you might know. It drills down into what you need to know to do the work you need to do with JS, without forcing you to go way into the weeds, but also without dragging you through tutorial-hell.One of my top 3 favorite programming books so far, and I’ve tried a lot of them.

Excellent – Clear, concise, complete, latest!
Love this book. JavaScript is a rapidly changing language, so it is great to have a book with the latest info. Love the authors style – very easy to understand, and not verbose at all. I primarily use it to read the sections I am interested in, and have never been disappointed! I always find what I am looking for and it is explained with just the right level of detail. All round a great book!

Excellent book
I really enjoyed reading this book. It was easy and quick to read, covered everything I wanted to learn about, and left me with a strong understanding of the covered concepts. So glad I found it (even though it was written very recently). I’m sure this will become a classic.

Modern vs obsolete JavaScript *and* focuses on four types of readers
I’ve enjoyed all the books in the “impatient” series, so it is no surprise I enjoyed “Modern JavaScript for the Impatient.”I like that Cay focuses on “modern JavaScript” over “obsolete JavaScript.” (I last used JavaScript professionally many years ago so I’m well learned in “obsolete JavaScript”). I also like that Cay has four icons used for chapters (or sections) showing the level of difficulty. I’m listing them here because it gives you a feel for how Cay focuses in on what different types of readers would need.1) Impatient bunny – basics that everyone should learn2) Alice – intermediate topics that everyone should understand, but maybe not on first reading3) Cheshire cat – advanced topic that will put a smile on the face of a framework developer4) Mad hatter – complex and maddening topic for those with morbid curiositySeeing the icons as I read definitely put a smile on my face as I kept thinking of Alice in Wonderland.Like all “Impatient” books, there are helpful notes/warnings throughout and exercises at the end of each chapter to reinforce your reading. I think this book would be too fast paced for someone’s first programming book. However,this book is an excellent read if you are comfortable with ANY other language.The code examples in each chapter helped me get up to speed quickly. I read the Impatient bunny and Alice parts. My brain was too full for the rest. I did like that there was a chapter on TypeScript at the end. I hear the front end folks talking about it all of the time!—Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for writing this review.

This book is an excellent treatment of JavaScript for the reader who has prior programming experience in JavaScript (or another programming language). While so many programming books are verbose and bloated, this one takes the opposite approach. The book’s overview of JavaScript is precise and concise. Honestly, over several decades I’ve read loads of books about programming, and I’ve never seen one communicate so many concepts so clearly in so few words.Explanations of JavaScript language features are concise and accurate. In many cases, the author makes a quick comparison between a JavaScript language feature and an equivalent feature in another programming language (e.g., Python, Java, C++, etc.). This allows the reader to leverage their existing knowledge of other languages by learning how a JavaScript language feature is similar or dissimilar to something they already understand and use.In addition to concise explanations of languages features, the book is full of information about JavaScript programming pitfalls and it provides practical strategies for avoiding them. These strategies usually relate to the “Five Golden Rules” stated in the book’s Preface. This approach effectively leads the programmer toward reliable solutions that avoid aspects of JavaScript that are problematic.And, in other respects, the author seems to take a pragmatic approach. For example, in several places (e.g., 7.9 Array Reduction) while explaining a language feature he acknowledges that while a feature might be “elegant” it may also be entirely unnecessary because the programmer could accomplish the same result through some other simpler and more familiar means. This pragmatic insight is scattered throughout the book.The description of the book (on the back cover) indicates that it is intended to help programmers “Make the jump from languages such as Java, C#, C or C++”. In this respect, the book delivers exactly what it promises and I cannot think of a better alternative. But, while it is an excellent resource for a person with programming experience (in JavaScript or any other language), I do think it would be less suitable for a person with no or very little programming experience. This is because the book simply doesn’t have the amount of introductory-level material that is typically required by a complete programming newbie. So, if you are completely new to programming, I suggest you look elsewhere.

I haven’t written much JavaScript since my Web 1.0 days (how old am I !) and really didn’t want to buy the huge Rhino book and start working through. What I wanted was “this is how you should do it now” without knowing all of the old deprecated features, wasting my time doing poor historic practices etc. This book is a nice size, about 300 pages and gets straight ot the point. I’m getting through it quickly as it is concise and well paced. The book doesn’t include a “lets build an example app…”, but that’s not what it aims to do, I can get other more specialist books to do that. It will give you a very solid grounding, and you will learn a lot of advanced features as well. Great book.