Ask HN: JavaScript is cool again, but the learning resources suck...

Posted by scooby2 on Wednesday March 16, 2011 @02:53PM
from the ask-hn dept.

...so if you had to recommend one JavaScript learning resource, what would it be?

Specifically I'm looking for something suitable for a relative novice (have done some cut & paste programming and messed with RoR), and that focuses on core JavaScript without getting bogged down in DOM stuff (I'll get to that later!).

Web searches turn up a bunch of mostly outdated resources or focused on browser development. I did find the moz stuff, but I'm looking for something more tutorial or easier to digest.

What's your top: website, book, webcast?...

Thanks!

( 6 comments | 17 points | on HN )

Re:Ask HN: JavaScript is cool again, but the learning resour... by craigsmitham on Wednesday March 16, 2011 @03:04PM (#2333403)

http://eloquentjavascript.net/ - HTML version has interactive console to practice exercises

http://javascript.infogami.com/Javascript_in_Ten_Minutes

http://yuiblog.com/crockford/

http://javascript.crockford.com/

More advanced:

http://www.addyosmani.com/resources/essentialjsdesignpattern...

http://bonsaiden.github.com/JavaScript-Garden/

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: JavaScript is cool again, but the learning resour... by scooby2 on Wednesday March 16, 2011 @09:02PM (#2334656)

Thank you! Those first two look very promising. I'd found the Crockford Files (!) before, and whilst they look interesting for historical reasons, much of it was lost on me at this stage.

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Re:Ask HN: JavaScript is cool again, but the learning resour... by clyfe on Thursday March 17, 2011 @04:05AM (#2335430)

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/a_re-introduction_to_javasc...

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Re:Ask HN: JavaScript is cool again, but the learning resour... by bergie on Wednesday March 16, 2011 @04:11PM (#2333671)

I blogged a bunch of resources recently: http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/the_universal_runtime/

And yes, Eloquent JavaScript rocks

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Re:Ask HN: JavaScript is cool again, but the learning resour... by scooby2 on Wednesday March 16, 2011 @09:13PM (#2334681)

Thanks. CoffeeScript looks interesting - quite Rubyish, although I'd be a bit worried that by going that route I'm going to end up having to learn both syntaxes (syntaxi ?-) to understand / debug the resulting JavaScript, or to make use of other JS code snippets.

Interesting blog article BTW, and part of the reason I picked JS to have a bash at.

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Re:Ask HN: JavaScript is cool again, but the learning resour... by devinrhode2 on Saturday March 19, 2011 @03:46AM (#2343171)

w3schools.com. Your one stop shop. It has never failed me, but more importantly, I've succeeded faster than ever with it.

Want to create text shadows? just search on w3, copy code, modify.

But it doesn't stop there! w3 is faster, more concise, and more functional for jQuery than jQuery.com itself!

With w3, you can start doing things without knowing how. (You learn when you start modifying the code.)

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