The must have books for JavaScript in 2019

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JavaScript has been a favorite language to developers throughout recent few years. It was initially supported by web browsers but soon after its release, server side implementations of the language were introduced by different organizations like Netscape, Microsoft and the open-source Node.js. It is not only used for designing webpages but for databases, server scripting and for mobile and desktop applications too. One of the most prominent reasons to learn JavaScript is its enormous community and its products. There are a number of cool JavaScript libraries which makes the life of a developer very easy. ECMA International has introduced the ECMA2017 standards which are quite effective and saves enough amount of time. With all this, the community has made large efforts to bring Machine Learning and JavaScript together. Taking all these into consideration, JavaScript seems worth our time.

If you are a beginner or an intermediate JavaScript developer, we suggest you some books which you might find helpful.

1. Eloquent JavaScript, 3rd Edition: A Modern Introduction to Programming

This books takes you from the scratch to an intermediate level. It adapts the learning by doing approach by providing you with exercises and full-chapter projects. Once you get some hands on experience, the book will teach you best programming practices for clarity and code debugging which really makes a difference. Once you get enough proficient with the language, the book teaches how to interact with web browsers and manipulate DOM in effective way. The end chapters introduces its reader to the server-side scripting using Node.js.

2. JavaScript: The Good Parts

The book is also a beginner’s guide assuming no prior knowledge of the language. The book give you a detailed look at the basic parts of the language like syntax, functions, and data structure and control etc. After giving a walk through the essentials, it makes a smooth transition towards a little hard topics like regular expressions and AJAX. Apart from the technical stuff, this book make a clear difference between the good parts (good practices/style) and the bad parts (bad practices) of the language and encourage you to utilize the good parts in an efficient manner.

3. JavaScript: The Definitive Guide: Activate Your Web Pages (Definitive Guides)

This book is recommended for intermediate JavaScript developer. The 6th edition of this book covers HTML5 and ECMAScript 5. Although ECMAScript 5 was introduced in 2009 which is pretty old now, the latest is ECMAScript 2017 (I Love It), but the book gives a comprehensive introduction the basics. Like most of the books, the real beauty lies in the chapters dedicated to the best practices of web development.

4. Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja

The book is written by John Resig, the creator of the most famous JS library (JQuery), for an intermediate developer. It revise the basic concepts thoroughly, but it focuses on other key JavaScript concepts like closures, prototypes, objects and promises. APIs for DOM, events and timers are covered in great details. The part which I love of this book the testing and cross-browser development. It will prepare you to dig deeper in debugging hacks. The second edition of this book is rewritten to cover ES6 and ES7 concepts.

5. You Don't Know JS: Scope & Closures

The author of this book has put an adequate amount of energy to show you the inner working of the two core JavaScript concepts, scope and closure. It tells you how to analyze variables and follow up nested scope. It is a brief but an extensive guide to look deeper into functions, patterns and scope based hiding. The most attractive part of this book is its introduction to building your own libraries.