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Beautiful JavaScript: Leading Programmers Explain How They Think 1st Edition, Kindle Edition

by Anton Kovalyov (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 16 ratings
See all formats and editions

JavaScript is arguably the most polarizing and misunderstood programming language in the world. Many have attempted to replace it as the language of the Web, but JavaScript has survived, evolved, and thrived. Why did a language created in such hurry succeed where others failed?

This guide gives you a rare glimpse into JavaScript from people intimately familiar with it. Chapters contributed by domain experts such as Jacob Thornton, Ariya Hidayat, and Sara Chipps show what they love about their favorite language—whether it’s turning the most feared features into useful tools, or how JavaScript can be used for self-expression.

Contributors include:

  • Angus Croll
  • Jonathan Barronville
  • Sara Chipps
  • Marijn Haverbeke
  • Ariya Hidayat
  • Daryl Koopersmith
  • Anton Kovalyov
  • Rebecca Murphey
  • Daniel Pupius
  • Graeme Roberts
  • Jenn Schiffer
  • Jacob Thornton
  • Ben Vinegar
  • Rick Waldron
  • Nicholas Zakas
Read more Read less
Previous page
  1. ISBN-13
    978-1449370756
  2. Edition
    1st
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    O'Reilly Media
  5. Publication date
    August 13, 2015
  6. Language
    English
  7. File size
    2556 KB
  8. See all details
Next page

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Anton Kovalyov was born and raised in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Back in the day, he was mostly writing Python and (re-)compiling Gentoo. In 2008, he moved to the United States where he joined Disqus. Around the same time, he discovered JavaScript and the two have been inseparable ever since. While at Disqus, Anton authored JSHint, a JavaScript linting tool and co-authored Third-Party JavaScript(Manning). After Disqus, Anton moved to Mozilla, where he worked on the Firefox Developer Tools team.

Today, Anton works at Medium and lives in Oakland, CA.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B013VQ7N3G
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ O'Reilly Media; 1st edition (August 13, 2015)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 13, 2015
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 2556 KB
  • Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 250 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 16 ratings

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    Anton Kovalyov

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Customer reviews

4 out of 5 stars
4 out of 5
16 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

G. Fouasnon
5.0 out of 5 stars Haven't been this thrilled by a programming book since The Good Parts
Reviewed in the United States on February 8, 2016
Verified Purchase
Disclaimer: I used to work with the book's author/editor, so I guess that technically makes my review biased or something. But if you ever saw how much we used to argue, you'd be even more persuaded by my review. :)

I loved this book. I've been writing JavaScript professionally for about four years, and of all the technical books I've read (JavaScript or otherwise), I daresay it's one of my favorites. It was a pure joy to read, an intellectual adventure. It contains food for thought and practical insights in equal measure.

It's not your typical programming book. It's less of "here's how you do JavaScript" and more of "hey! have you ever considered this aspect of programming? (in JavaScript)" The book assumes that you are already pretty familiar with the language; it doesn't attempt to explain concepts that an intermediate JavaScript programmer should know. But that's also part of what sets it apart. In a good way.

I also love the way that the contributors' personalities come through in their respective chapters. It gives this book a particularly human quality that most technical books lack.
3 people found this helpful
Helpful
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FM
4.0 out of 5 stars Caveat Emptor
Reviewed in the United States on September 2, 2015
Revised review:

This book is part of the well known "Beautiful *" O'Reilly series. I read most of them and they gave me deeper insights and new ideas.
In a significant departure from the other books in the series, this book is quite short, enlisting 15 (fifteen) contributors.
[Why do both other two reviewer say 14 (fourteen)? Didn't they read the book? Didn't they count Kovaliov's nice chapter?]
The 15 chapters are more reminiscent of the high quality articles sported by great magazines like the late Dr. Dobb's Journal, than of the more self contained essays that make the other books in the series.
Unfortunately, the publisher didn't make this clear enough in the book presentation (unless the all lowercase "/theory/in/practice" on the front cover is meant to mark the difference).
The printing quality is poor, at least in my copy: the characters borders are not neat, this is not a problem with the monospaced font used in listings, but reading the paragraph of regular text was eye-straining.

The content is undoubtedly solid and wise, and I appreciated that sometimes different authors convey healthily different views. However, I didn't met in this book the breath taking beauty that I met in quite a few chapters of other books of the series.
To my surprise half of the text is not really JS specific, it states solid principles that could (should!) be applied to programming in whatever language. This is not to say that this content is not relevant or useful, it was however hardly new.
OTOH, part of the JS specific content proved mostly introductory to known aspects of JS language or ecosystem, at least to me.

Bottom line:
- is this a "Beautiful *" book? Not really, two stars
- is the content solid and useful to an audience? Sure, five stars
- is the price adequate for the book? No, it's excessive, the right street price should be around 20 Euros, two stars
- is JavaScript beautiful? yes, it is, it's one of the most powerful and promising languages around, five stars

Average: three stars and half, rounded up to four.

Original review:

I discovered this book via social media, I spotted a few great contributors among its authors, and preordered it. I didn't pay attention to its size, I didn't chase for a table of contents on the publisher's site, I simply assumed it was another thick and juicy book in the well known O'Reilly "Beautiful <you name it>" series.
I just received it, and to my dismay, it's a significantly thinner book than I expected: it's in the same price range of other books in the series (even more in Europe) while sporting no more than one third of the pages.
Even worse, I quickly perused it and got the impression that part of the content is quite basic stuff, and not that much specific to JavaScript.
Too bad.
Now, I have to read it, in the hope that, while thinner than other books in the series, it has a much higher specific juice. I'll be back.
5 people found this helpful
Helpful
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Jordan Scales
5.0 out of 5 stars A really interesting way to look at the language I use every day
Reviewed in the United States on September 4, 2015
Verified Purchase
This book contains 14 chapters from 14 different prominent JavaScript authors - each of which can be read with your morning coffee (as I did). It's not a tutorial, but a work exploring from many different perspectives why JavaScript code is written the way it is. That's why I loved it so much.

Check out this book if you feel you've already learned all the syntax you need to learn, and now want to look at JavaScript from a higher level. Definitely a book I'm excited to share with friends and colleagues.
11 people found this helpful
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Jon Kuperman
5.0 out of 5 stars First of it's kind!
Reviewed in the United States on September 4, 2015
Verified Purchase
Amazing read! It's like having a personal chat with 14 amazing JavaScript developers. This book is certainly different than any other coding book I've read but none the less it's a must have for any JavaScript book collection!
5 people found this helpful
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Kevin
5.0 out of 5 stars Written in an easily approachable way - well worth the money spent considering ...
Reviewed in the United States on September 22, 2015
Verified Purchase
Written in an easily approachable way - well worth the money spent considering the awesome ideas written.

Each chapter has little surprises/special things about it that I enjoy...just buy the book it's awesome
3 people found this helpful
Helpful
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Amazon Customer
2.0 out of 5 stars Not recommended
Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2020
The target are developers as are hesitant towards Javascript. He uses 15 chapters to argument why Javascript is not that bad as the reputation. You don't learn much about Javascript nor how to program. After chapter 7 is gets more interesting. He mention things he programmed and partly how they were thinking in development, but not concretely. Even if I had read it five years ago, I would not give it a better score. As a javascript developer I did not find any news or any tip how to program beautiful. Javascript the good parts are way more interesting.
One person found this helpful
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jtiemann
5.0 out of 5 stars Nice, simple, easy
Reviewed in the United States on July 17, 2019
Verified Purchase
Book was delivered as expected and in excellent condition
Helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

jcubic
4.0 out of 5 stars Good reading
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 20, 2017
Verified Purchase
Good reading, I've learn new things from the code snippets in the book, even that I've know JS very well. Some example code have errors, so if you're testing it you will need to fix it first before it will work.
Report
FM
4.0 out of 5 stars Caveat Emptor
Reviewed in Italy on September 2, 2015
Verified Purchase
Revised review:

This book is part of the well known "Beautiful *" O'Reilly series. I read most of them and they gave me deeper insights and new ideas.
In a significant departure from the other books in the series, this book is quite short, enlisting 15 (fifteen) contributors.
The 15 chapters are more reminiscent of the high quality articles sported by great magazines like the late Dr. Dobb's Journal, than of the more self contained essays that make the other books in the series.
Unfortunately, the publisher didn't make this clear enough in the book presentation (unless the all lowercase "/theory/in/practice" on the front cover is meant to mark the difference).
The printing quality is poor, at least in my copy: the characters borders are not neat, this is not a problem with the monospaced font used in listings, but reading the paragraph of regular text was eye-straining.

The content is undoubtedly solid and wise, and I appreciated that sometimes different authors convey healthily different views. However, I didn't met in this book the breath taking beauty that I met in quite a few chapters of other books of the series.
To my surprise half of the text is not really JS specific, it states solid principles that could (should!) be applied to programming in whatever language. This is not to say that this content is not relevant or useful, it was however hardly new.
OTOH, part of the JS specific content proved mostly introductory to known aspects of JS language or ecosystem, at least to me.

Bottom line:
- is this a "Beautiful *" book? Not really, two stars
- is the content solid and useful to an audience? Sure, five stars
- is the price adequate for the book? No, it's excessive, the right street price should be around 20 Euros, two stars
- is JavaScript beautiful? yes, it is, it's one of the most powerful and promising languages around, five stars

Average: three stars and half, rounded to four.

Original review:

I discovered this book via social media, I spotted a few great contributors among its authors, and preordered it. I didn't pay attention to its size, I didn't chase for a table of contents on the publisher's site, I simply assumed it was another thick and juicy book form the well known O'Reilly "Beautiful <you name it>" series.
I just received it, and to my dismay, it's a significantly thinner book than I expected: at 33 Euros, it's in the same price range of other books in the series while sporting no more than one third of the pages.
Even worse, I quickly perused it and got the impression that part of the content is quite basic stuff, and not that much specific to JavaScript.
Too bad.
Now, I have to read it, in the hope that, while thinner than other books in the series, it has a much higher specific juice. I'll be back.
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