[thelist] Book recommendations?

Erik Mattheis gozz at gozz.com
Mon Jul 1 02:27:01 CDT 2002


<tip type="buying computer books" author="Erik Mattheis">

When browsing computer books which you intend to use to learn
something you don't know:

- Look for a "who this book is for" section and see if it describes you.
- Pay particular attention to the quality and completeness of the
index! If you have any amount of curiosity, you'll likely start doing
things before you've digested enough to work without the book in from
of you. And regardless, if you don't have a bear-trap like memory,
you'll need a good index when you actually start doing stuff.

</tip>
At 8:34 PM -0700 6/30/02, Joel Canfield wrote:
>For complete coverage, Danny Goodman's JavaScript Bible. For a beginning
>look from both a conceptual and syntactic perspective, Dave Thau's Book of
>JavaScript: A Practical Guide to Interactive Web Pages

I have to give a hearty +1 on Danny Goodman's book ... however, that
would also be my recommendation for someone who doesn't know any JS
at all ... if you know how to search the internet and know HTML, it's
the only book you'll ever need. This book, thelist and irt.org serve
my needs sufficiently to this day.

At 9:25 AM +0530 7/1/02, Madhu Menon wrote:
>Though I still suck at JS, a good book is "JavaScript: The Definitive
>Guide" by David Flanagan

It's funny you say that (yet recommend the book for a beginner ?!?!)
... I got that before The JavaScript Bible and temporarily gave up on
JS. It was way beyond my "I know nothing other than HTML" level.

The two most useful language books I've purchased were The JavaScript
Bible and Ben Forta's CF Web Application Construction Kit ... both
these have been condemned in discussions (maybe here, maybe
elsewhere) by computer science major types ... because of some reason
like "Well,  maybe you could learn something from them but they don't
get into the 'why's' and are not complete." ... it seems a common
flaw of CS majors is to assume everyone else has the general
background to learn something new ... even if that new thing is the
_first_ thing someone chooses to learn after HTML.

DannyG: if you're still on thelist: thanks much for the book! At four
(or so?) years old, it's tattered and missing the back cover and part
of the (excellent) index ... so worn that yesterday, I reassigned it
to keeping my new air conditioner at the right angle in my window
until I can figure out how to remove the thing that holds the screen
and storm windows in.

--

__________________________________________
- Erik Mattheis

(612) 377 2272
http://goZz.com/

Through Mid July
9am - 4pm M-F:
(952) 838 7698

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