Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja

One respect where the title is accurate in that this book is about coding Javascript directly, _not_ about coding to the interface of any library (like jQuery) that rides on top of Javascript. I found the explanations of "closures", of _exactly_ what it means for functions to be "first-class objects", and of function names and anonymous functions, very enlightening ...perhaps the best parts of the book.I was somewhat hoping for a whole lot of nuggets for improving the conciseness and clarity and performance of my coding style, perhaps showing how best to take advantage of the structure of the language, or how best to code recurring structures such as looping.. But that isn't the focus of the book. A few gems are indeed spun off in the process of covering other topics, but there aren't oodles of them.Disagreement with other Javascript luminaries, and with the direction of Javascript standards development, is often ignored or underplayed or muted. Although there is obvious potential for disagreement, controversy is definitely not the book's zeitgeist.The book largely skirts the issue of Javascript being more "object oriented". There's a clear statement that at root Javascript is _not_ object-oriented, and a strong hint this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Also, some simple tricks for making Javascript _seem_ much more object-oriented than it appears at first glance are presented briefly in scattered locations. But there the coverage ends, without any theoretical underpinning nor in-depth discussion nor even any strong opinions.Although two authors are listed, this is basically John Resig's book. A very few paragraphs did hint at tag-team authoring. But I suspect (but don't know for sure:-) mostly the publisher added the second author in exasperation over finally getting the book finished and out after almost five years.The book isn't real clear just who its audience is: maintenance coders? creators of libraries? language nerds? The good thing about this ambiguity is the topics covered range more widely than expected.Much of the second half of the book is various nitty-gritty details about coding around all the cross-browser and language-version and interpreter-implementation issues one runs into. Specific examples of the various quirks and workarounds were sometimes so bizarre it was clear there'd be little chance of an individual ever solving them. My overall takeaway from the second half of the book was that in almost all cases one should code to some sort of covering library (like jQuery) that handles all the quirks in a transparent way, rather than to Javascript directly. (I also picked up the suggestion Javascript would be easier in some future where IE6/IE7/IE8/IE9 have only insignificant market share.)(Readers from different backgrounds will of course see the book very differently, so let me describe my own background: I'm a retired programmer who professionally used other languages exclusively and whose only acquaintance with Javascript comes from home use. I do have extensive experience with the related C though; for example I'm quite comfortable with and routinely use the difference between pre-increment and post-increment. I'm not a computer language nerd, nor even someone with a relatively good coding style overall. On the other hand, I was already fairly comfortable with some of the more obscure details of various Javascript implementations.)

(Must READ) Book for every new and experienced web designer/developer. As an experienced full-stack web developer and instructor for more than 8 years, this is one of the most usable and skill developer books about JavaScript that I have ever seen. You should have previous exposure to JavaScript/CSS/HTML and some Ajax concepts and if you have Back-end technology on hand as well, it will help you to get the most out of the concepts covered in this book. I love the flow of information, relevant and clean code examples and explanations.There is no escape from learning advanced JavaScript techniques and tools unless you decide to work as anything else but not Web industry expert. Forget about everything you knew about JavaScript since 10 years ago, This programming language has been changed a lot and is not a simple-to-ignore technology anymore. If you are a serious web expert (or want to be), use quality materials available in the market.This book is one of them without any doubt.

As a book to understanding the inner working of function invocations, closures, scopes, prototyping et al (and associated) gotchas, you would be hard pressed to beat this book. For that alone, this is the go to book on all things JS. Caution: This is not to be treated as a first book on Javascript. This is fairly advanced level stuff he discusses but thing that trip up even season programmers (but JS is a poorly conceived language so these slip ups are pretty common among programmers)Obsolescence is a common problem with most tech books: the technology moves so fast that a book, unless annually updated, becomes out of date pretty fast. We can give that a slight pass because that's the nature of the beast. Glaringly, if you were to buy this today, notable omissions would be AngularJS & ReactJS.There is another notable thing that's unforgivable: grayscale charts & graphs. Try matching the legend (grayscale, not color) to the pie-chart (also in grayscale) and I cannot make out which slice belongs to which framework in the legend.Time for an update Mr Resig

This book is heavily concentrated on explaining why JavaScript is a functional programming language and how that can be used by the developer. The half of the book is dedicated to JavaScript functions, there is everything you will need to know about JavaScript functions: anonymous functions, recursions, inline named function ans so on.The other half of the book explains everything that you will need to develop well structured JavaScript code.The only remark I have for this book is about the 'Regular Expressions' chapter, in my opinion it is not written very clear and can be confusing, but it is fer to say that the authors are suggesting additional literature for getting familiar with regular expressions.Big plus is that all the source code form the book examples is very well structured and packed in zip file that enables you to quickly try the examples on computer.

The book is well written, concise and easy to understand. If you're relatively new to JS, this should be a good read. If you however have been developing JavaScript for a while and have a few medium to large apps under your belt, don't expect to get a ton out of this book.Most of the concepts covered in the book are geared towards folks who have a cursory understanding of JavaScript but want to know more about it. Unfortunately, a few of the more advanced topics are glossed over. The title could be more appropriate to the content of the book, the content covers industry-standard JavaScript as opposed to clever ninja-like secrets.Rated 3 stars as a result of the misleading Amazon description, title and back-cover summary.

This book provides a great intermediate to advanced coverage of Javascript. (I don't recommend it for absolute beginners). I've also read "Javascript the good parts" by Douglas Crockford, which good but quite short and made the reader work hard to fill in the gaps / understand the examples. Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja is much easier reading and covers the material at a more leisurely pace.

Good read, and useful book to have! The style of some of the examples is a bit outdated, but understandably so considering the age of the book, the rapid progression of JavaScript and the target audience. I look forward to seeing the new edition being released soon!

One of the better books I've read covering advanced JavaScript, superb for more experienced developers. Although my JS is very adequate, I found this book great for those little tips and snippets that really assist your JS coding.

A must read book for anyone serious about JavaScript. Simple as that.

Really good book, sometimes it becomes a bit too hard but in the end it learned me a lot.