Reader reviews

This is the one to get if you are serious about javascript.

I picked this up after getting stuck on a project and it turned out to be exactly the right book at the right time. I particularly liked the way the author builds up from simple cases before introducing the harder material. It is denser than the page count suggests, and I found myself slowing down around the middle. I have already recommended it to two colleagues and will recommend it to more.

Decent, but uneven. Some chapters are much stronger than others.

A colleague recommended this and I can see why. It does something that few technical books manage: it respects the reader's time. The index and cross-references are surprisingly good, which matters for a book I will come back to. The early chapters move quickly through material I already knew, but the later sections were genuinely new to me. Fine, but there are stronger books on the same subject if you look around.

Genuinely excellent — I finished it in a week and immediately started again.

There is a particular kind of technical book that is dense without being difficult, and this is one of them. A couple of chapters felt like they could have been merged, but that is a minor complaint. The exercises at the end of each chapter are worth doing — they caught a few misconceptions I did not know I had. Worth the money and the reading time, without hesitation.

Outstanding. I kept finding reasons to come back to it.

A colleague recommended this and I can see why. It does something that few technical books manage: it respects the reader's time. Some terminology is introduced without much ceremony; I had to look a few things up along the way. The author avoids over-explaining, which keeps the pace up but means you need to pay attention. This is the book I wish had existed when I started working with windows desktop.

Excellent from start to finish. No filler, no padding.

I bought this on a whim after seeing it mentioned in a forum thread, and I am glad I did. The examples are small enough to type out and experiment with, which is exactly what I want from a book like this. Some terminology is introduced without much ceremony; I had to look a few things up along the way. An easy five stars from me. I look forward to whatever the author writes next.

Hard to recommend. The examples assume too much and explain too little.

I had been on the fence about this one for a while, and I should have bought it sooner. I appreciated the honesty about what the book does not cover — it saved me from expecting things that were not there. The balance between theory and practice is well judged; neither side dominates. I would look elsewhere unless you have a specific reason to need this particular title.