Home/ Questions/Q 6040495
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-23T06:31:19+00:00

I want to learn JavaScript nicely and become very good at it. I want

  • 0

I want to learn JavaScript nicely and become very good at it. I want to form a systematic learning plan before I start reading the books. Don’t want to end up wasting my time reading the wrong books.

I want to learn from books that will teach me enough to be able to learn all the things that are commonly used in today’s websites.

For example, if you look at this website

http://rethrick.com/#

His page source doesn’t show the full content of the web page. How does he do all those animated transition effects?

How do I learn all that stuff? Please help me. I want to learn all that stuff. Which book should I start reading?

Another example is the Stack Exchange websites. For instance, the Writers website itself. When you hover over the Questions link on the top or any of such links, it displays a yellow background highlight. How do they do that?

Where do I learn all these tricks? I see two options:

a) Look up the web on an ad hoc basis when you need to learn some trick.

But I don’t like this technique.

OR

b) Systematically learn and read some books. I will read all the books if I have to. Please tell me what technologies other than JavaScript are at use to do these things.

And if it is just JavaScript, what books will teach me the level of JavaScript that Google employees and FogCreek and StackExchange employees use.

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    And if it is just JavaScript, what books will teach me the level of JavaScript that Google employees and FogCreek and StackExchange employees use.

    This is the easiest to answer: none. Yes, get started with Danny Goodman’s tome or JavaScript: The Good Parts if you have some programming experience and want a quick intro, but both will only get you started. I mean, I’m sure they had some textbooks they read in college, but it’s kind of like asking what books made pro athletes so good, or what book you read to get good at guitar.

    It’s maybe 10% textual material and 90% constant practice — finding new problems to solve and figuring out how to solve them.

    EDIT

    I don’t intend to imply that avoiding books is admirable, merely that experience is the best teacher, and that a theoretical understanding is only a means to an end: practical understanding. Books are absolutely necessary here; I’m mostly disputing the connection between books and the kind of expertise that lands you a high-flying job. For a perhaps more relevant example, imagine language learners. You can study the textbooks all you’d like, but absent experience you’ll stutter like a first-year student. (Even if, for example, you can recite correctly the grammatical differences of some construction better than a native speaker.)

    So no, don’t just copypasta and come to SO when things break. But do start early in your reading, and the mistakes you make (rather than some script you copied) are often the best teachers.

    • 0