Post

ok so... I'm writing a book. It's called JavaScript In Depth (www.manning.com/books/javasc...) ... the first four chapters are available by Manning. This has been a difficult project and will continue to be so. The reason is that it isn't a How To book that focuses only on how to use the langauge

manning.comJavaScript in Depth - James M. SnellExplore the inner workings of the world’s most popular programming language and enjoy the power and control that comes only from deep knowledge! In JavaScript in Depth, JavaScript and Node legend Jame...

5 reposts30 likes

One other point... I'm 100% asking for feedback and input. If you take a look at the chapters and say, "Gah! this isn't helpful at all!" then that's helpful. Following that up with, "What you should really talk about is ..." that's even better.

The goal instead is to focus on how the various parts of the JavaScript language itself work, why they are defined the way they are, what those decisions mean for performance and complexity, etc. It's not intended to teach how to use the language but why it does the things it does...

... and honestly, it's probably the most difficult thing I've worked on in a long time. It's fairly easy to say, "Follow steps A, B, and C"... it's a whole lot more difficult to explain why those are the steps and to explain what's happening when those steps are taken! ...

... The difficulty really lies in knowing what exactly to talk about, knowing how to frame it so that it is approachable to new and intermediate developers, and knowing how to discuss it so that the critical points come through without getting lost in the weeds... but why are these details needed?

What I've often found is that most bugs in JavaScript applications do not arise from a lack of understanding of how to *use* an API but rather a lack of understanding of what that API is *doing*... how it works, what side effects there are, why it was designed the way that it was, etc....

how much will you talk about streams/buffer? There's async iterator/generator which seems to be what some Node core members are pushing, but some Node APIs warn that the iterators are slower compared to using callbacks. ANd I'd love to see how to use any stream API for high-performance usecase.

It looks great from the outline! I have it on my wishlist. I'm resisting the urge of yet another book. I already got 3 from manning last month and want to finish them (at least the non-MEAP books)

I see there's event loop and GC chapters, so probably there'll be enough topic to cover high-perf usage or properly tuning certain runtimes based on the knowledge gained.