Learn Enough JavaScript to Be Dangerous

Learn Enough JavaScript to Be Dangerous is out!

The full price is $24, but you can buy a copy of the ebook now (296 pages) and get a 20% launch discount through Friday, May 11.

As the only programming language that can be executed inside web browsers, JavaScript is an essential part of every programmer’s toolkit. Learn Enough JavaScript to Be Dangerous is designed to get you started writing practical and modern JavaScript programs as fast as possible, using the latest JavaScript technologies (including Node.js and ES6), with a focus on the real tools used every day by software developers.

• Chapter 1: Hello, world! – Get started with JavaScript by implementing the iconic “hello, world!” program four different ways.
• Chapter 2: Strings – Learn how to use JavaScript to manipulate the raw material of text files and the Web.
• Chapter 3: Arrays – Meet JavaScript’s universal object container.
• Chapter 4: Other native objects – Learn about Math, Date, regular expressions, and “plain” objects, including a challenging example on finding the unique words in a block of text.
• Chapter 5: Functions – The essential groundwork for everything else we do in the tutorial. Learn what functions are, how to define them, how to chain them, and how to use them to do iteration the Right Way™.
• Chapter 6: Functional programming – Level up your coding skills with a challenging chapter on the great triumvirate of functional programming: map, filter, and reduce.
• Chapter 7: Objects and prototypes – Learn the general way to define JavaScript objects. Get started with one of our major code examples: testing palindromes. (Racecar!) Includes tips from Achilles and DHH on adding methods to built-in objects.
• Chapter 8: Testing and test-driven development – Make a real NPM module en route to learning the basics of JavaScript testing and test-driven development (TDD). Result: Detecting fancy palindromes like “A man, a plan, a canal—Panama!”
• Chapter 9: Events and DOM manipulation – Learn how to make and deploy a simple single-page JavaScript application using the NPM module developed in Chapter 8.
• Chapter 10: Shell scripts with Node.js – Leap past all those Web-only JavaScript devs and learn how to write proper shell scripts with Node.js.
• Chapter 11: Full sample app: Image gallery – Using the sample app from Learn Enough CSS & Layout to Be Dangerous as a base, learn how to use JavaScript to make a beautiful and functional image gallery. (By cloning the sample app repo using Git, we ensure that everyone can complete the chapter, even those who didn’t finish the CSS tutorial.)

Learn Enough JavaScript to Be Dangerous differs from many other JS tutorials in that it treats JavaScript as a general-purpose programming language right from the start. The result is an unusually solid foundation for not only JavaScript web development, but also for programming in many other contexts.

(Note: I am also preparing a video screencast series based on the book. Join the Learn Enough mailing list to be notified when it’s ready.)

I hope you enjoy the tutorial!

Remember: You can get a 20% launch discount on the Learn Enough JavaScript to Be Dangerous ebook (296 pages) through Friday, May 11.