JavaScript

What Hacker News says

1. cxrMar 2023
   > It took David Flanagan's JavaScript: The Definitive Guide and Douglas Crockford's JavaScript: The Good Parts for people to begin taking it seriously.

   You're giving developer.mozilla.org (and the existence proof that is/was Firefox and other Mozilla toolkit applications) short shrift.

   The wider world began taking JS even more seriously when the iPhone launched with the imprimatur that Safari was its SDK (even if that detail was eventually reversed and largely forgotten).

   Also: thought of as a toy language, sure, but being considered one that "wasn't even as good as VBScript" is highly exaggerated.

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2. garyclarke27Jun 2020
   I would add Javascript- The definitive guide (David Flanagan) I just bought it again, Version 7 just been released 9 years after version 6. It’s an amazing book.
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3. jostylrJun 2020
   JavaScript: The Definitive Guide 7th edition (2020) by David Flanagan is well worth a look for a thorough understanding of the language that includes fundamentals. Not sure if a total beginner should look at it (I got started with 5th edition and it was really useful, but I was already comfortable coding), but it does seem quite suitable for a deep dive once some basics are known.
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4. mimixcoJan 2019
   JavaScript: The Definitive Guide by David Flanagan did that for me. Once I finally got prototypes and this, my JS code really took off.
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5. combatentropySep 2016

     > a fairly long-lived and large code-base
   

   Such could be spaghetti on any platform. To understand web programming, I wouldn't start with something big and old. I've been doing web programming for more than a decade, and I still don't get the majority of web frameworks. Start instead with the basics, and work your way up:

   1. HTML. Don't view the source of websites and web apps to understand HTML. Read a good book or tutorial. HTML Dog is a good one.

   2. CSS. Likewise.

   3. JavaScript. Definitely don't try to learn JavaScript by viewing source either. Instead, maybe HTML Dog. There's also Douglas Crockford's _JavaScript: The Good Parts_ and David Flanagan's masterpiece, _JavaScript: The Definitive Guide_. I don't know how I would have ever understood JavaScript if I had not taken the months to read Flanagan's book cover to cover.

   That takes care of the client side. For the server side, it should come much more easily. Basically you have a database, like I'm sure you're used to. Then you need a web server, like Apache or Nginx, and some kind of glue language like Python or PHP. Many people put a lot of code here. But I like to keep it pretty thin: like the database and the browser just talking to each other. Even so, just running this side of the affair can be a full-time job in itself.

   I recommend at some point familiarizing yourself with the HTTP protocol in general: all the headers, request methods, etc. Basically once you can use Telnet to imitate a browser requesting a page, you'll feel more comfortable with how simple it really is.

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6. atmosxOct 2015
   I have this one[1] and it seems to be extremely well written.

   http://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Definitive-Guide-Activate-G...

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