From basic to advanced, from trainee to senior.
Introductory Level — Knowledge base
At this level, you will learn JavaScript as well as programming in general. Therefore, I chose the book to go into the background, easy to read, and understand.
Head First JavaScript Programming: The HeadFirst series has the advantage of being easy to read, with lots of illustrations, easy to remember, but a bit wordy. This book, you can stop reading until chapter 9, from chapter 10 on, there are also many advanced concepts, slowly come back to read later.
JavaScript and JQuery: Interactive Front-End Web Development: The content is also quite ok. The book is 100% coloring and has lots of illustrations so it’s easy to read and follow. P2eople appreciate it on Amazon.
At this stage, you just need to be familiar with JavaScript syntax and understand how to use variables, methods, if / else, loop, array, etc.
Medium level- After about 2 — 3 months
After you have mastered basic JavaScript, you can learn more about AJAX, DOM and more “super” concepts such as closures, prototype, OOP, …
Eloquent JavaScript, Second Edition: This book covers the basic to advanced knowledge in JavaScript, including DOM, Canvas, Ajax, NodeJS.
A good point of the book is that the author not only talks about JS but also covers the underlying knowledge (what is the HTTP protocol, what the browser uses to send requests, etc.).
The book is a bit long, about 400 pages but with illustrations, there is a sample project for you to follow so you can take advantage of practice.
Professional JavaScript for Web Developers, 4th Edition: The content is similar as above, the book covers all the JavaScript APIs and the DOM. Session.
Secret of the JavaScript Ninja, Second Edition: The author of the book is John Resig, author of jQuery library.
He shares and explains very carefully about the concepts of scopes, closures in JavaScript, how to write test code, how to write code that can run on many different browsers.
This book has a lot of good experiences, patterns and code samples that you won’t find in any other book.
Advanced level — When you want to go further
At this point, when your JS capabilities have reached a certain level, you should learn about how the JavaScript language works (how the code is parsed, how the execution is done, how the scope works). This makes the difference between a junior and senior.
JavaScript The Good Parts: This book should only be read if you have about 1.2 years of JavaScript coding experience. The author shares JavaScript sida quirks; the bad habits JS developers have (eval, global variable, …); along with tips on how to write better code.
You don’t know JS: This is a series of nearly 5 or 6 books about JavaScript. The author goes in depth to reinterpret basic JavaScript concepts.
I think that instead of plugging in old framework archetype plug, you should spend time reading this series, it will surprise you many times, … because “Oh, this is JavaScript!
JS Patterns + Learning JS Patterns: These are two books about design patterns in JavaScript and how to apply them in practice.
Reading and mastering these design patterns, when you encounter similar problems in coding, you will know how to apply them effectively.
In addition, if the junior just writes code to run, the senior must be different. At this level, you must know how to write code that is easy to read, understand, and maintain. So don’t read JS books, read more books like Clean Code, Code Complete.
Specialized skills
Node — Up & Running + Mastering NodeJS:
NodeJS is a runtime of JavaScript, built on top of Google v8 Engine, allowing to run JavaScript on the server. Currently, there are many websites that write back-end in NodeJS.
If you work on the back-end, want to try with NodeJS, you should read these 2 books to understand the basics of the NodeJS runtime, along with how to write code to suit its asynchonous model.
In this article, I do not introduce books about JavaScript library / frameworks such as AngularJS, React, VueJS, Express. Since each library / framework also has 2.3 books, the introduction will dilute the article. If you learn the basics of JavaScript, any framework can be played.
Final advice
At the beginning you should read and follow the book, because it has very important background knowledge that the video or tutorial doesn’t have. However, read, read, remember to code and do a pet project something.
