By Diana Espino
When I was studying JavaScript back in 1999, there were no resources to learn from. No books, no Mozilla Developer Network, no Codecademy or Code School, and no one teaching it at school! Learning from another source was non-existent for me.
My learning came from studying the source code of web sites, observing the patterns I saw, and experimenting with those patterns through trial and error to see what worked. That’s really how I learned how to code for the web way back then. It was a total easter egg hunt!
Today, learning resources abound!
Earlier this year, I began diving into all the new resources popping up all over the place. Trying to learn new libraries, frameworks, development methods, and debugging techniques. Trying to keep up with the pace of what seemed like a group of really tall runners with long legs. I found myself playing “catch up” with the latest discoveries in JavaScript. It felt like a never ending sprint. Exhausting.
Along came a Facebook engineer.
Chapter after chapter, the connections Stefanov made between PHP and JavaScript, gave me an instant comprehension of areas I once thought complex. In so doing, all the misunderstandings I had about JavaScript began to melt away and for the first time, I began to see JavaScript for what it really is.
JavaScript is:
Fun – it really is!
Helpful – for when you have that weird idea for a solution to a problem that you just can’t seem to implement with any of the other languages that you currently know.
Powerful – build once, use many times and with different languages and environments.
Delightful – it’s so straightforward, that it makes for a happy experience working with it.
Simple – you can accomplish a whole lot with just a few lines of human readable code.
Elegant – the code plays well with a good handler.
Discoverable – just like in the days of Columbus, someone had already discovered America, but there was still so much left to explore!
Although this book is geared toward PHP developers, it can very well be used by anyone with experience in another programming language. I highly recommend it to developers who want to transition into JavaScript or who are in the pursuit of becoming fluent in JavaScript. This book will get you on the fast-track to discovering (or rediscovering) JavaScript.
