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Eloquent JavaScript, The Annotated Version

153 points by gordonzhu 12y ago

gordonzhu 12y ago
This is an annotated version of the second edition of http://eloquentjavascript.net/ http://eloquentjavascript.net/. There are two objectives for this project: (1) Add comments to make the text easier to understand. (2) Allow you to ask me questions using comments so you don't get stuck. The big idea is that you’ll be able to get through the book without any issues and understand everything on a very deep level. I’ve heard from too many people that the first few chapters have been smooth and then the middle to later chapters have been a struggle (which is a big shame). I want the entire book to be a smooth experience so that you can feel confident about JavaScript and can move on to bigger things. My goal is to create a really useful and lasting resource that helps a ton of people. Please let me know what you think! If you've struggled through parts of the book before, I'd love to hear about it so that I can spend more energy on the parts where you need it most. I also posted this on Reddit and it's currently at the top of /r/learnjavascript if you'd like to see the discussion there. http://www.reddit.com/r/learnjavascript/ http://www.reddit.com/r/learnjavascript/
- gordonzhu 12y ago
  Crap so if you open the file now you may get a message at the top of the page that says: "Wow, this file is really popular! Some tools might be unavailable until the crowd clears. Try again. Dismiss." This sucks because comments don't show when this happens, which is the whole point. Hopefully things will die down later and the comments will be visible again soon.
  - liviu 12y ago
    I think this won't change any time soon. Take a look at Angular Announcements[1] released in November 2014. The warning message is still visible today. I think it's a bug or something because once your file get that warning message it remains forever. [1] https://docs.google.com/a/ideveloper.ro/presentation/d/1fE0PW1FMlYU9Xhig_QIGF8Yk1ApVfQQvntEEi4GbCm8/preview?sle=true&slide=id.p https://docs.google.com/a/ideveloper.ro/presentation/d/1fE0P...
    - gordonzhu 12y ago
      So if I add "/edit" to the link that you provided, the doc seems fine. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1fE0PW1FMlYU9Xhig_QIGF8Yk1ApVfQQvntEEi4GbCm8/edit https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1fE0PW1FMlYU9Xhig_QIG... I wonder if the bug you're seeing is something that is specific for Google slides in presentation mode.
  - atom-morgan 12y ago
    I guess this is a perfect use case for http://genius.it/eloquentjavascript.net http://genius.it/eloquentjavascript.net
  - Raphmedia 12y ago
    Could you make multiple copies ("mirrors") ?
  - gordonzhu 12y ago
    Thanks for the suggestions everyone. Genius definitely looks interesting. First, really sorry if the comments still aren’t showing up. I really thought the doc would be working by now, but it isn’t. The plan now is to wait a bit longer, and then tomorrow if there’s still no luck with Google Docs, I’m going to move the project to another service. My gut is telling me to use medium.com for this. Medium won’t die under heavy lead, it’s well designed, and it also has some great commenting features.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
blawa 12y ago
This is really cool (unfortunately google docs never manages to handle the load). This is a great initiative, and I only wish for it to be better so I was wondering how would something like a "medium.com" style blog work for it? Their annotation is actually pretty cool. In any case, thanks for doing this! (and if docs.google.com continues to stay the way it is, may I suggest using onedrive? I've seen facebook docs on it don't fail under heavy load, it runs on azure)
olov 12y ago
I haven't been able to see the comments so I can't give feedback on that, but you should give proper credits to the book's author, Marijn Haverbeke and respect his choice of license, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ (summary) and http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/legalcode http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/legalcode (full license).
- gordonzhu 12y ago
  Thanks for pointing this out. I've added Marijn Haverbeke's name to the top of the doc and also linked to the license.
louhike 12y ago
Is it only aimed at beginners?
- AlexeyBrin 12y ago
  Yes, if you already know JavaScript you can probably peak and chose what is interesting for you from the book. Check the actual book website http://eloquentjavascript.net http://eloquentjavascript.net
  - atom-morgan 12y ago
    I've always found it interesting that people say this book is targeted towards beginners. If this had been my first programming book, or one of my first, I know the chapters starting with functional programming would have really confused me. I personally recommend this book after another more introductory level book on JS.
marijn 12y ago
People keep voting this up, even though the comments are broken. If you're just going to read the book, note that there's a better-formatted, interactive version at http://eloquentjavascript.net http://eloquentjavascript.net
- AlexeyBrin 12y ago
  Just curios, did this guy asked for your permission to basically republish your book ?
  - NathanKP 12y ago
    The content of the book is specifically licensed Creative Commons and MIT. Therefore no permission is required as long as you follow the terms of the licensing agreement.
Ygg2 12y ago
Does anyone know the difference between the online version and the published version?
- marijn 12y ago
  The published version has one bonus chapter. That's basically it (except for a few small mistakes that were caught after the thing went to print -- http://eloquentjavascript.net/errata.html http://eloquentjavascript.net/errata.html)
fridek 12y ago
It's a great and well written book already. I'm not sure how can you benefit from annotating it any further. It's important to accept that some books are aimed at a certain level and for people not quite there yet better alternatives exist [1]. There are also some topics that a book needs to just mention and not go into much details, because for a beginner the exact internals of TCP are not useful anyway. [1] http://jsbooks.revolunet.com/ http://jsbooks.revolunet.com/
- fridek 12y ago
  If you want to spend some time helping people, please consider https://hackpledge.org/ https://hackpledge.org/
- emmanueloga_ 12y ago
  That's a nice resource, never saw that page before. Just to clarify I'd say Eloquent JavaScript is a nice book, and definitely a beginners book. I say this because it seems you are saying the annotations could help "people not quite there".
wil421 12y ago
I just bought this book last week and havent dove in yet. Bookmarking this page for future reference. Can anyone suggest a JS book to read after this one, for someone thats not quite a beginner with programming but trying to improve their JS skill set?
- 2mur 12y ago
  Javascript Allongé [0] by Reg Braithwaite [1] [0] https://leanpub.com/javascript-allonge/read https://leanpub.com/javascript-allonge/read [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=raganwald https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=raganwald
whoisthemachine 12y ago
This would probably not be trivial, but perhaps it would be better to upload this to Github in Markdown format? Github would allow comments, suggested changes to the original text, version control, etc.
serve_yay 12y ago
> "Below the surface of the machine, the program moves. Without effort, it expands and contracts. In great harmony, electrons scatter and regroup. The forms on the monitor are but ripples on the water. The essence stays invisibly below." Man, I hate reading stuff like this in technical books.
- choward 12y ago
  Me too. I already spend a lot of time reading to stay up on technology. I don't need crap like this wasting more of my time.

153 points by gordonzhu 12y ago

This is an annotated version of the second edition of http://eloquentjavascript.net/ http://eloquentjavascript.net/. There are two objectives for this project: (1) Add comments to make the text easier to understand. (2) Allow you to ask me questions using comments so you don't get stuck. The big idea is that you’ll be able to get through the book without any issues and understand everything on a very deep level. I’ve heard from too many people that the first few chapters have been smooth and then the middle to later chapters have been a struggle (which is a big shame). I want the entire book to be a smooth experience so that you can feel confident about JavaScript and can move on to bigger things. My goal is to create a really useful and lasting resource that helps a ton of people. Please let me know what you think! If you've struggled through parts of the book before, I'd love to hear about it so that I can spend more energy on the parts where you need it most. I also posted this on Reddit and it's currently at the top of /r/learnjavascript if you'd like to see the discussion there. http://www.reddit.com/r/learnjavascript/ http://www.reddit.com/r/learnjavascript/

gordonzhu 12y ago
Crap so if you open the file now you may get a message at the top of the page that says: "Wow, this file is really popular! Some tools might be unavailable until the crowd clears. Try again. Dismiss." This sucks because comments don't show when this happens, which is the whole point. Hopefully things will die down later and the comments will be visible again soon.
- liviu 12y ago
  I think this won't change any time soon. Take a look at Angular Announcements[1] released in November 2014. The warning message is still visible today. I think it's a bug or something because once your file get that warning message it remains forever. [1] https://docs.google.com/a/ideveloper.ro/presentation/d/1fE0PW1FMlYU9Xhig_QIGF8Yk1ApVfQQvntEEi4GbCm8/preview?sle=true&slide=id.p https://docs.google.com/a/ideveloper.ro/presentation/d/1fE0P...
  - gordonzhu 12y ago
    So if I add "/edit" to the link that you provided, the doc seems fine. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1fE0PW1FMlYU9Xhig_QIGF8Yk1ApVfQQvntEEi4GbCm8/edit https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1fE0PW1FMlYU9Xhig_QIG... I wonder if the bug you're seeing is something that is specific for Google slides in presentation mode.
- atom-morgan 12y ago
  I guess this is a perfect use case for http://genius.it/eloquentjavascript.net http://genius.it/eloquentjavascript.net
- Raphmedia 12y ago
  Could you make multiple copies ("mirrors") ?
- gordonzhu 12y ago
  Thanks for the suggestions everyone. Genius definitely looks interesting. First, really sorry if the comments still aren’t showing up. I really thought the doc would be working by now, but it isn’t. The plan now is to wait a bit longer, and then tomorrow if there’s still no luck with Google Docs, I’m going to move the project to another service. My gut is telling me to use medium.com for this. Medium won’t die under heavy lead, it’s well designed, and it also has some great commenting features.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

blawa 12y ago

This is really cool (unfortunately google docs never manages to handle the load). This is a great initiative, and I only wish for it to be better so I was wondering how would something like a "medium.com" style blog work for it? Their annotation is actually pretty cool. In any case, thanks for doing this! (and if docs.google.com continues to stay the way it is, may I suggest using onedrive? I've seen facebook docs on it don't fail under heavy load, it runs on azure)

olov 12y ago

I haven't been able to see the comments so I can't give feedback on that, but you should give proper credits to the book's author, Marijn Haverbeke and respect his choice of license, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ (summary) and http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/legalcode http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/legalcode (full license).

gordonzhu 12y ago
Thanks for pointing this out. I've added Marijn Haverbeke's name to the top of the doc and also linked to the license.

louhike 12y ago

Is it only aimed at beginners?

AlexeyBrin 12y ago
Yes, if you already know JavaScript you can probably peak and chose what is interesting for you from the book. Check the actual book website http://eloquentjavascript.net http://eloquentjavascript.net
- atom-morgan 12y ago
  I've always found it interesting that people say this book is targeted towards beginners. If this had been my first programming book, or one of my first, I know the chapters starting with functional programming would have really confused me. I personally recommend this book after another more introductory level book on JS.

marijn 12y ago

People keep voting this up, even though the comments are broken. If you're just going to read the book, note that there's a better-formatted, interactive version at http://eloquentjavascript.net http://eloquentjavascript.net

AlexeyBrin 12y ago
Just curios, did this guy asked for your permission to basically republish your book ?
- NathanKP 12y ago
  The content of the book is specifically licensed Creative Commons and MIT. Therefore no permission is required as long as you follow the terms of the licensing agreement.

Ygg2 12y ago

Does anyone know the difference between the online version and the published version?

marijn 12y ago
The published version has one bonus chapter. That's basically it (except for a few small mistakes that were caught after the thing went to print -- http://eloquentjavascript.net/errata.html http://eloquentjavascript.net/errata.html)

fridek 12y ago

It's a great and well written book already. I'm not sure how can you benefit from annotating it any further. It's important to accept that some books are aimed at a certain level and for people not quite there yet better alternatives exist [1]. There are also some topics that a book needs to just mention and not go into much details, because for a beginner the exact internals of TCP are not useful anyway. [1] http://jsbooks.revolunet.com/ http://jsbooks.revolunet.com/

fridek 12y ago
If you want to spend some time helping people, please consider https://hackpledge.org/ https://hackpledge.org/
emmanueloga_ 12y ago
That's a nice resource, never saw that page before. Just to clarify I'd say Eloquent JavaScript is a nice book, and definitely a beginners book. I say this because it seems you are saying the annotations could help "people not quite there".

wil421 12y ago

I just bought this book last week and havent dove in yet. Bookmarking this page for future reference. Can anyone suggest a JS book to read after this one, for someone thats not quite a beginner with programming but trying to improve their JS skill set?

2mur 12y ago
Javascript Allongé [0] by Reg Braithwaite [1] [0] https://leanpub.com/javascript-allonge/read https://leanpub.com/javascript-allonge/read [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=raganwald https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=raganwald

whoisthemachine 12y ago

This would probably not be trivial, but perhaps it would be better to upload this to Github in Markdown format? Github would allow comments, suggested changes to the original text, version control, etc.

serve_yay 12y ago

> "Below the surface of the machine, the program moves. Without effort, it expands and contracts. In great harmony, electrons scatter and regroup. The forms on the monitor are but ripples on the water. The essence stays invisibly below." Man, I hate reading stuff like this in technical books.

choward 12y ago
Me too. I already spend a lot of time reading to stay up on technology. I don't need crap like this wasting more of my time.