If you’re planning to get involved any form of web application development, a working knowledge of JavaScript is becoming more of a requirement than a desire. If you’ve never touched the language, knowing where to start can feel overwhelming.
Ray Bango recently published an article that helps to provide a list of material for budding JavaScript developers.
Though the original post has a number of great suggestions, it’s long. Based on my experience, I’ve tried to distill the list a little bit to the bare essentials for anyone looking to get into JavaScript coding.
Here’s my take:
Beginner
- JavaScript: The Good Parts. This is required reading.
Intermediate
- DOM Scripting. Important for anyone that’s looking to understand how pages are viewed by the browser and how JavaScript can manipulate them.
- JavaScript: The Definitive Guide. This is a great desk reference.
Advanced
- Pragmatic Guide To JavaScript. The Pragmatic Programmer guides are some of my favorite technical books. Always worth the investment.
- Pro JavaScript Techniques. Advanced techniques provided by John Resig.
Again, Ray’s original article has great suggestions and I highly recommend checking it out – especially if you’ve got a significant amount of time to allot to reading a bit of content.
Maybe that’d make a good New Year’s Resolution? đŸ™‚
Ryan Hayes says
That’s a solid list. Nice post.
Tom McFarlin says
Sure thing, Ryan.