(Part 2) Top products from r/learnjavascript

If you really want a book, there are a few that I've come across that I've liked and will suggest. Eloquent Javascript is a good one (it's free online!)

https://www.amazon.com/Eloquent-JavaScript-Modern-Introduction-Programming/dp/1593272820

Depending what you want to learn to do, also good:

https://www.amazon.com/Web-Design-HTML-JavaScript-jQuery/dp/1118907442/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=YZ1P5N33ZRNPZG6SNM27

You just asked about books, but I would suggest unless you REALLY know you learn best by a book, I'd start with online tutorials (I liked Codeacademy) just to quickly get your feet wet. Codeacademy was a good way to learn the basic syntax you'll need. The books I've read, while great, tend to go deeper (not good at this stage IMO) than online tutorials which negate your "quickly" condition. Looking back, I didn't get a lot from the books until I was comfortable making code that did SOMETHING (and not much more) on my own. To me, that's the most effective way to learn quickly these days. It's easy to get sucked down a rabbit hole of feeling like you need to be an expert to start but looking back this is the plan that would have saved me a lot of spinning my wheels: 1st, do online tutorial (just 1 MAYBE 2); 2nd, then code SOMETHING (just to see you can make the computer listen to you); 3rd, When you feel like you can do something but don't understand exactly why or how it works THEN I'd get a book. That's when you'll get the most bang for your buck IMO. It's so easy to spin your wheels thinking you're one book or tutorial away from becoming an expert. It's cliche but the best thing really is to learn a little and then start making things. Take advantage of supportive programming friends or communities and don't be afraid to ask for help. You will learn more by making silly mistakes than if your code magically works the first time. Hope this helps!

I have recently read this book. I didn't like it at all. Just to give you an idea of my skill level, so you can compare it with where you are at, I've been doing HTML/CSS/Javascript for over a decade. My Javascript skills though have been more script line by line style as opposed to OOP intermediate level stuff. So I bought this book look to increase my Javascript skills.

While the book says its HTML5 with Javascript programming, it doesn't really cover the basics very well for either, even saying you should be familiar with both before reading it. At the same time, it spends half the book, quickly covering the basics, in such little depth, I would struggle to understand who its for.

The second half of the book, just spends one chapter at a time going over the various HTML5 APIs and how to use Javascript with them. For a 600 page book, there is so much fluff here, its unbearable. Its a really poor book. Its not for beginners, but its probably too simple for intermediates.

...

If you need to know HTML/CSS I'd highly recommend http://www.htmlandcssbook.com/

You'll want to install Sublime Text to do your work in it.
You'll want to create a Github account and download the client and learn how to version control.

After you've done the HTML/CSS book. I'd recommend learning about SASS from DevTips https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XmUUa_pWw8

You can install CodeKit to make compiling it easier.

...

For Javascript, I recommend "A Smarter Way to Learn Javascript" https://www.amazon.com/Smarter-Way-Learn-JavaScript-technology/dp/1497408180/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473808304&sr=8-1&keywords=a+smarter+way+to+learn+javascript

It's a really good, QUICK, and straight to the point book on beginner Javascript. ~250pages

Then... If you want to round it out, I'd recommend Head First Javascript Programming https://www.amazon.com/Head-First-JavaScript-Programming-Freeman/dp/144934013X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473808479&sr=8-1&keywords=head+first+javascript+programming. While being full of fluff, as is Head Firsts way, is a much better book than their HTML5/JS one. With a lot of great examples ~600pages

After that, I'd recommend Learning Web App Development https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Web-Development-Semmy-Purewal/dp/1449370195/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473808519&sr=8-1&keywords=learning+web+app+development ~300pages which will start to introduce the full javascript stack to you.

...

I hope that helps mate.

JS is hard, especially for people new to programming. Basically, JS as we know it today is an evolution of a browser hack that only recently became a seriously useful language. The syntax is terrible, math and numbers don't make any sense, the regex system isn't super robust, oh and it's not really an OOP language. Technically, it is multi-paradigm and includes some oop-like things and classes are on the way to browsers, but it's for naught anyway, because you don't need classes in JS - It's a prototypical inheritance based language.

If you're new to programming in general, I'd say you should start with a more sane environment, like Python. It will teach you programming concepts while railroading you into making good coding decisions. It's really common for people to start with Learn Python the Hard Way - don't. Go to /r/learnpython and search "LPTHW 31" and just count up the people struggling with it. Zed Shaw is an idiot, there are better things to read, I'd recommend watching the google IO talks, get a buddy to learn with. Honestly, I've never read a python book cover to cover, but I feel pretty comfortable with the language from just googling "How do I do X in Python" millions of times, usually if a link comes back to docs.python.org, I click that one first. The docs are wonderful, you don't need a book.

But, since JS is one of the most important languages due to it's integration with the most common form of media distribution in our time, I'd recommend reading / watching talks by Douglas Crockford. Check out Javascript: The Definitive Guide and Javascript: The Good Parts. The second one is a little easier to digest, while the first is really the definitive guide.

In both cases, I'd recommend doing the challenges on hackerrank.com.

Functional programming is notoriously difficult to teach due to people learning it and getting stuck in jargon. Then it becomes almost impenetrable when you combine that with a language with a totally new syntax (like haskell). There's an old joke that's somewhat tired but expresses this well: "what's so hard about monads? It's just a monoid in the category of endofunctors".

That all being said, I think that means the best way to seriously get into it is to avoid resources that focus on jargon. Unfortunately javascript is not a great language for FP, so most of the great resources I can think of focus on other languages:

• F# for fun and profit is basically everything I just said, but for F# (this specifically talk really helped me but check out the whole website):
  https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/rop/
  
  
• I've been consuming content from Mark Seemann for a while. I liked his book on dependency injection a lot, but he also gives good talks on some functional stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US8QG9I1XW0
  
  
• LYAH (learn you a haskell) is somewhat obligatory. I don't really like it too much since it almost immediately delves into typeclasses (which I think are very intimidating to a newbie) but I would feel bad not giving it a mention: http://learnyouahaskell.com/chapters
  
  
• The little schemer is a good way to pick up LISP (and you will eventually pick up LISP if you stay in functional circles long enough, the language is just too perfect). LISP is especially good for getting you out of thinking of things in imperative steps and more like streams of data (which is the big take-away).
  
  
• On the javascript side of things, react and react-likes can actually be a decent way to start thinking functionally, if you avoid the class-based stateful components. Redux takes a lot of lessons learned from FP. I picked up react many, many moons ago so I don't remember any good resources there, sorry.
  
  
• The elixir home page is very dry, but focuses on learning a functional language pragmatically and without a lot of the higher-level jargon.
  
  
• Rust! The rust book is one of the better programming books I've read, and rust will probably be the most approachable thing on the list if your background is javascript, especially if you're already comfortable with how promises work. Rust is heavily influenced by functional languages, to the point it doesn't even have exceptions.

When I was starting to learn JS which was not that long ago at all and I am still learning I started with this video series:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLz5rnvLVJX5VdVNddvRTj68X6miAWQ5pz

.then this one
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLz1XPAFf8IxbIU78QL158l_KlN9CvH5fg&disable_polymer=true

.then this one
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4cUxeGkcC9jAhrjtZ9U93UMIhnCc44MH

.then I read:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0596517742/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

.then I read: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1430264489/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
and
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1118871650/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

.then I read:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1491904240/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
and
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1491904240/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

.then
When I felt like I had a good enough grasp on vanillajs I started a giant project in Angularjs. Where I advanced my skills with git big time. Other resources I used are:
Atom: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYzJdSdNWNqwNWlxz7bvu-lOYR0CFWQ4I

Rest api with MEN (lol): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4cUxeGkcC9jBcybHMTIia56aV21o2cZ8

Docs are great for js: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript

These were good for angularjs just incase you were interested:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlUCU13dJyo&list=PL4cUxeGkcC9gsJS5QgFT2IvWIX78dV3_v

Honestly I cant link one of this guys videos because they all help sooooo much:
https://www.youtube.com/user/shiffman

I highly recommend the book Head First Ajax by Rebecca Riordan. Ultimately, you may decide to use a framework like jQuery for simplifying the XMLHttpRequest API, but this book really helps explain AJAX, how it works, and how to write AJAX requests using vanilla JavaScript.

The Head First books are especially helpful for beginners, I really like the approach they take to teaching you in ways that are visual and make it easier to remember.

> Want to make web apps, games, use it to validate forms, send/get data via ajax, make image sliders on site, win 8 store apps...?

I am very much in the same boat as the OP. I'm working through Eloquent Javascript at the moment but I'd like to start working on some very basic practical exercises other than print statements. My answer to the above question would be "Yes."

The links you provided are helpful, thank you!

EDIT: One thing, I found a book called HTML5 in action but the authors did not include anyone named Manning. Is this it?

the programming language isn't particularly as important as the methodology. the wiki is actually a pretty decent place to start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_automation

google and microsoft both used to have dedicated roles for these types of folks: SET/SDET software engineers/developers in test. i'm not sure if they still do or if it's more that every software engineer they hire needs to also have those skills. you basically need to be a capable software engineer while also knowing things about software testing.

folks at google wrote a book that was a decent read: https://www.amazon.com/Google-Tests-Software-James-Whittaker/dp/0321803027

i would say the best place to start is to make sure you're writing decent unit tests for your c# code at work. get familiar with continuous integration and deployment systems and start thinking more about higher levels of testing.

A year from now you will look at your code and say the exact same thing. One of the best ways is to simply write and read a lot of code. http://www.amazon.com/The-Clean-Coder-Professional-Programmers/dp/0137081073 This is a book a lot of people recommended you may want to give it a look. Here is a breif guide of javascript design patterns http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/understanding-design-patterns-in-javascript--net-25930 Another design related link http://addyosmani.com/scalablejs/ I havent gotten the chance to read it myself but the author is very knowledgeable so I have faith its high quality.

My personal favorite way to learn how to structure code is to read tutorials and see how the author designed his program. From there I try to understand why they structured their code that way and compare it to how I would have done it. Lastly, your english is fine. :)

Here are a few of my favorites:

Design patterns:

• http://addyosmani.com/resources/essentialjsdesignpatterns/book/#designpatternsjavascript
  
• https://leanpub.com/javascript-allonge/read
  
• https://leanpub.com/javascript-spessore/read
  
  The JavaScript language:
  
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Effective-JavaScript-Specific-Software-Development/dp/0321812182
  
• http://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Good-Parts-Douglas-Crockford/dp/0596517742
  
  And as a general language reference, MDN is the best: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/
  
  Hope that helps!

I can't tell you anything about Code Avengers, but the Codecademy course, even after the major overhaul they did to improve it, the javascript courses(and a lot of the other courses, but we'll leave those out) are still lacking in my opinion. Some are just soooo awfully written that you're forced to go to the Q&A section to just copy and paste and answer. Even on the courses that were understandable and worked alright, they were monotonous and I also feel that some of the lessons were stretched out for some reason; perhaps for fear that the information wouldn't stick.

However, I don't think that sites like that should necessarily be used for learning; I'd rather point you to books such as this and video tutorials for really learning the language. Sites like codecademy are positively wonderful for review; I doubt there's a more engaging way of reviewing and fine-tuning your mind for programming other than actively using the language, which is what really makes a programmer.

Proof of my account

Everyone says it, because it is true. The best way to learn a language is to work with it. Put up a personal website, and start writing little code bits to do different things.

If you want to learn the language and understand the technical details of it, I recommend this book. I bring one of these pocket books with me whenever my wife makes me go with her to a store.

http://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Pocket-Reference-OReilly/dp/1449316859/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1420511897&sr=1-2&keywords=javascript+o%27reilly

Does the back end receive the price of the item from the client's HTTP request or does the back end get the price from a separate server? If it's getting it from the front end, that is bad practice. What you would want to do is attach some piece of meta-data to every type of item sold. Typically this is handled via an SKU, UPC code, or manufacturer's code. Now you can check the price of each item by checking another server for the price for that given SKU/UPC code.

Think of your application from this structure:

1. Product Showcase / front end of the website
   
   
2. Shopping cart
   
   
3. Back-end and database
   
   Each product should have an SKU, UPC, or manufacturer's code attached to it. Take this DDR4 memory as an example from Amazon. At the end of the title of the product we have "HX429C15PB3AK2/16". This is a manufacturer's code and it's used to specify the exact model of RAM in question. For your client, you could use this information to do a lookup on another server for the price.
   
   If you're not too familiar with it, I would also recommend you look into the MVC or Model-View-Controller paradigm to get an understanding of how the front end should interact with the back-end so that very little user input is actually trusted by the back-end.
   
   However the key thing to look into is: does your contract specify that YOU must build out the shopping cart application or can this be handled through a third-party application?
   
   A key thing you'll really need to spend time investing in and learning is PCI Compliance. In order to handle credit card transactions across the internet, generally a credit card company requires the vendor/merchant they're working with to be PCI compliant.

He's correct; JavaScript for Kids is a great book!

I liked reading Zakas's books, like this one: Understanding ECMAScript 6: The Definitive Guide for JavaScript Developers, and his object-oriented javascript book.

Great, I've been wanting to join the previous groups, hope I can follow now, I am a backend developer with a serious front-end disfunction hehe, and I need it badly for my current project, we use lots of backbone.

Do you have a planned roadmap for the 8 weeks that I missed, or you will post weekly plans?

I've been wanting to dig into FP, what are your thoughts on the http://www.amazon.com/Functional-JavaScript-Introducing-Programming-Underscore-js/dp/1449360726 book? would it be a good mix for this course?

PS. I've tried to finish the good parts, I never can. Also I bought the javascript ninja book, but I never started it...

Thanks!

I bought these, i havent gotten to the javascript portion yet, but this book is really really good.. I recommend it. You can get them separate.

I started learning about two weeks ago and this is my path so far.

Codecademy: HTML/CSS, jQuery, Javascript, (and a few others, learning web dev)

Books: Eloquent Javascript, Pragmatic Programmer

Codewars.com: Training JS Series

Basically, I've gone through the Codecademy courses and they gave a good overview of things. I practice on Codewars and read the books when I am not in front of a computer or not doing anything else. Currently I am taking courses on Treehouse Wordpress track

Don't learn PHP. If you're going to spend time learning Javascript, learn Javascript and learn the node.js APIs and ecosystem. It's easier to transition to node.js compared to PHP since you already would have Javascript knowledge.

I read this book 10 years ago and it's what made JS click for me:

https://smile.amazon.com/JavaScript-Complete-Reference-Thomas-Powell/dp/0071741208/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1546913224&sr=1-1&keywords=JavaScript+The+Complete+Reference

Code Complete is often recommended on /r/programming