So you want to learn JavaScript. Know this, the path is dark and full of terrors (take that GoT reference as you’d like), but there are vast amounts of knowledge out there. The internet is the most powerful tool at your disposal, but, with great power comes great responsibility (what’s with the terrible references today anyway?), here’s why:
For every good and reliable source of information in the web, there’s 10 other sources that will do nothing but incur bad practices from the very beginning, and we don’t want that to happen, do we. I won’t teach you anything in this post today, but here’s a list of some of the best books, both free and non-free that you can look at and be confident about.
Know any other great books out there? Great! Post them in the comments section so we can all rejoice in knowledge! Here’s my top three:
Books
Eloquent JavaScript by Marijn Haverbeke
This book is both great and free (unless you want to get a paperback copy from Amazon). Beware, it starts slow and sets a very good base for you to start in the world of JavaScript and programming overall, but ramps up pretty quickly, so take your time and read through it as many times as it takes, and try to complete the exercises.
Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja by Bear Bibeault and John Resig
The books is a definitive must. It’s quite advanced, but will make a real difference in the quality and performance of your code.
You Don’t Know JavaScript Series by Kyle Simpson
This series is a treasure. They are fully available online for free (you can also get paperback versions though). Each book in the series covers a very specific area of JavaScript, and it does it very well. It goes deep and takes the time to explain not only how things work, but why the work in such ways. I would recommend this book series even to the most honed developers out there.
StartJS 