JavaScript, often abbreviated as JS, is a high-level, interpreted scripting language that conforms to the ECMAScript specification. JavaScript has curly-bracket syntax, dynamic typing, prototype-based object orientation, and first-class functions (Wikipedia). JS is a language that has exploded in popularity over the recent years and taking a look at it is worth it, to say the least. You will be intrigued by peering at what is taking place in the JS world. For instance, JS skills have never been on demand like it has been for the past five years. Meanwhile, in the open source community, more JavaScript code is uploaded to GitHub than any other language. That is not enough, just do your research and you will see the amazing things that are happening in the JS world.
The above was motivation enough that made us to share some of the best resources that you can use to get your smarts up in JavaScript. This article gives the best books that you can use to learn JavaScript (Node.js, AngularJS, ReactJS, ExpressJS and others)
1. Head First JavaScript Programming
The Head First series of books have fancy and amazing ways of interacting with the reader. The series uses a visually rich format designed for the way your brain works, not a text-heavy approach that puts you to sleep. Head First JavaScript is cool like that.
This brain-friendly guide by Eric Freeman and Elisabeth Robson teaches you everything from JavaScript language fundamentals to advanced topics. They include objects, functions, and the browser’s document object model. You won’t just be reading—you’ll be playing games, solving puzzles, pondering mysteries, and interacting with JavaScript. And you’ll write real code, lots of it, so you can start building your own web applications.
Prepare to open your mind as you learn (and nail) key topics including:
- The inner details of JavaScript
- How JavaScript works with the browser
- The secrets of JavaScript types
- Using arrays
- The power of functions
- How to work with objects
- Making use of prototypes
- Understanding closures
- Writing and testing applications
If you are interested in more, the link below will make your heart merry
2. Get Programming with Node.js
Jonathan Wexler in Get Programming with Node.js teaches you to build web servers using JavaScript and Node. In this engaging tutorial, you’ll work through eight complete projects, from writing the code for your first web server to adding live chat to a web app. Your hands will stay on the keyboard as you explore the most important aspects of the Node development process. This includes security, database management, authenticating user accounts, and deploying to production. You’ll especially appreciate the easy-to-follow discussions, illuminating diagrams, and carefully explained code.
The author is a senior developer with Bloomberg and these are what you will get inside
- New features from ES2015 and later
- Writing asynchronous code
- Creating data models
- Debugging JavaScript modules
- Full topic on Express JS
Satiate your desire to learn by clicking on the link below
3. Beginning JavaScript
Russ Ferguson, the author, compiled this book to help you get to know and get up-to-speed with JavaScript development. You will learn how to add dynamic enhancements to web pages.Russ emphasizes that JavaScript is one of the most important technologies on the web. This is through providing the means to add dynamic functionality to your web pages and serving as the backbone of working with frameworks like Angular and React.
Starting with the basics, you’ll see how to employ prototypical inheritance, as well as memory management, variable hoisting and event bubbling. Also covered is an introduction to Node.js and package managers. Key to understanding the tools necessary in front-end development and how they are used with current JavaScript frameworks.
Beginning JavaScript aims for beginner to intermediate developers with a basic knowledge of front-end programming. Whether you are beginning or not, you will be comfortable with this resource.
What You’ll Learn
- Construct good JavaScript syntax following modern coding practices
- Use JavaScript to communicate with the server and retrieve data
- Dynamically manipulate markup, validate forms and deal with images
- Debug applications using features inside the browser
- Use TypeScript to bring strong typing to the language
You can find reviews, pricing and more about the book on the link below.
4. The Road to Learn React
Robin Wieruch, the author of The Road to Learn React, is a German software and web engineer who is dedicated to learning and teaching programming in JavaScript. He decided to put together this resource to help the readers learn the fundamentals of React. The readers will build a real-world application along the way in plain React without complicated tooling. Everything from project setup to deployment on a server will be explained. The book comes with additional referenced reading material and exercises with each chapter. After reading the book, you will be able to build your own applications in React. The material is kept up to date by the author and the community.
In the Road to Learn React, the author offers a foundation before readers start to dive into the broader React ecosystem. This concise resource has less tooling and less external state management, but a lot of information around React. It explains general concepts, patterns and best practices in a real-world React application.
Furthermore, the author covers real-world features like pagination, client-side caching and interactions like searching and sorting. Additionally you as the reader will transition from JavaScript ES5 to JavaScript ES6 along the way. The reviews on this resource are astounding and give great confidence that it is worth buying a copy. The link below will get you to more information about this book.
5. Learning React
As far as new web frameworks and libraries go, React is quite the runaway success. Certainly, it not only deals with the most common problems developers face when building complex apps. It throws in a few additional tricks that make building the visuals for such apps much, much easier.
What React isn’t, though, is beginner-friendly and approachable. Until now. In Learning React, author Kirupa Chinnathambi brings his fresh, clear, and very personable writing style. This is all to help web developers new to React understand its fundamentals and how to use it to build really performant (and awesome) apps.
The only book on the market that helps you get your first React app up and running in just minutes. Learning React is chock-full of colorful illustrations to help you visualize difficult concepts and practical step-by-step examples to show you how to apply what you learn.
In a nutshell, the following are what you will benefit from the resource
- Build your first React app
- Create components to define parts of your UI
- Combine components with other components to build more complex UIs
- Use JSX to specify visuals without writing full-fledged JavaScript
- Deal with maintaining state
- Work with React’s way of styling content
- Make sense of the mysterious component lifecycle
- Build multi-page apps using routing and views
- Optimize your React workflow using tools such as Node, Babel, webpack, and others
- Use Redux to make managing your app data and state easy
With a well-written style from the author’s experience, do not be left behind. Get your React sparkling by clicking on the link below to get yours.
6. You Don’t Know JS: Up & Going
First, it is easy to learn parts of JavaScript, but much harder to learn it completely—or even sufficiently. It does not matter whether you’re new to the language or have used it for years. With the “You Don’t Know JS” book series, you’ll get a more complete understanding of JavaScript. This includes trickier parts of the language that many experienced JavaScript programmers simply avoid
The series’ first book, Up & Going by Kyle Simpson (Open Web Evangelist from Austin, TX), provides the necessary background for those of you with limited programming experience. By learning the basic building blocks of programming and JavaScript’s core mechanisms, you’ll be prepared to dive deeper. More in-depth books in the series are available and you will be well on your way toward true JavaScript.
With this book you will:
- Learn the essential programming building blocks, including operators, types, variables, conditionals, loops, and functions.
- Become familiar with JavaScript’s core mechanisms such as values, function closures, this, and prototypes
- Get an overview of other books in the series—and learn why it’s important to understand all parts of JavaScript
If you want to get to know the meat of JavaScript, this is a great start for you and you can have it from Amazon by clicking on the link below
7. AngularJS: Angular JS in 8 Hours
Written for absolute beginners, Ray Yao in this book covers all essential AngularJS knowledge. You can learn complete primary skills of AngularJS quickly and easily. The book includes more than 80 practical examples for beginners. It also includes tests & answers for the college exam and the engineer certification exam.
Among many others the beginner will learn:
- How to use AngularJS
- Using Directives
- Play around with Filters
- Hack Directive in DOM
- Understand and use Events
- Expression
- Controller & Scope
- Module & API
- Angular Service
- Use Angular Http
- Angular MySql
Bless yourself with this refreshing guide and book by checking it out on Amazon below:
8. Beginning Node.js, Express & MongoDB Development
If you are looking for a book to help you master and start building Node.js applications in no time, then this is the guide for you. It will walk you through a fun and practical journey to mastering Node.js, Express and MongoDB.
All the chapters of this book are well-structured and packed with the necessary content you need. The straight-to-the-point content really saves you time during your learning journey. In the end, you will have all the required skills to build and deploy a blog application to the internet.
Some of the chapters included in this book are:
- Introduction to npm & Express
- Beginning our Blog Project
- Templating Engines
- Introduction to MongoDB
- Uploading an Image with Express
- Introduction to Express Middleware
- Refactoring to MVC
- User Authentication with Express Sessions
- Showing Validation Errors
- Adding a WYSIWYG Editor
- Deploying Web Apps on Heroku
To get a copy of the book, click on the below link.
9. Web Development with Node and Express
This guide focuses on how to build dynamic web apps using Express which is a key component of the Node/JavaScript development stack. This guide by Ethan Brown has been updated to cover the Express fundamentals. It also walks you through the creation and development of sample applications just to ensure that all learned content is put to practice. This book also covers everything from server-side rendering to API development ideal for use in single-page apps (SPAs).
In general, the book covers:
- Create a templating system for rendering dynamic data
- Request and response objects, middleware, and URL routing
- How to persist data in document databases with MongoDB and relational databases such as PostgreSQL
- Simulating a production environment for testing
- How to integrate with social media, geolocation, and more
- How to develop secure apps with authentication, authorization, and HTTPS
- Implement a plan for launching and maintaining your app
Obtain a copy of this guidebook with the link:
10. Beginning MERN Stack
This guidebook provides a thrilling and practical experience as it takes you through the journey to mastering the MERN stack. It ensures that you are ready to build and run MERN applications in no time. Each chapter is packed with concise and well-structured content that saves you time when studying as it only focuses on the required content. In the end, you will have gained the skills to create a Movies review application and deploy it on the web.
The content converted here includes:
- Basic introduction to the MERN stack
- MongoDB Overview
- Setting Up MongoDB Atlas Cloud Database
- Adding Sample Data
- Setting Up Our Node.js, Express Backend
- Creating The Movies Data Access Object
- Testing Our Backend API
- Introduction To React
- MovieDataService: Connecting To The Backend
- Deploying Backend On Heroku
- Hosting And Deploying Our React Frontend
To grab a copy of this book, follow the below link:
Conclusion
JavaScript is growing at an explosive pace and more developers continue to be on demand. Probably due to the kind of problems that JacaScript can solve with speed and efficiency. Above all, we hope the resources provided will serve as either a starting point or a deep-end dive for you. Feel free to check out the guides listed below if you are interested with more. Thank you for reading through.
