A review of "JavaScript for Impatient Programmers" by Axel Rauschmayer
Tags: javascript, impatient, axel, rauschmayer
Published: 2018-11-26 18:35:45

---
title: A review of "JavaScript for Impatient Programmers" by Axel Rauschmayer
published: true
description: A Review of JavaScript for impatient programmers by Axel Rauschmayer
tags: javascript, impatient, Axel, Rauschmayer
series: Zach's book reviews
---

The Book starts with an about section and a history of JavaScript which is your typical Brendan Eich created JavaScript so fast it’s still causing people’s heads to spin. With that out of the way…

My first impression is that the book is broad, in a way that reveals those edge cases that you won’t run into every day, but when you do its painful. It's good for those of us, who head down, grind out code. You will get exposed to JavaScript you don’t see in everyday production work which is incredible for this programmer(me). One of the more exciting code examples is the use of an IIFE via an object method. Yep, you can set up an IIFE via an object method… interesting right! 

Another aspect of the book I like is that the exercises are in a unit test format. This was another “Wow how cool” moment for me. I haven’t written a ton of unit tests, and I still have an “I don’t want to,” attitude when it comes to unit testing. Going through the exercises will force someone like me to grow in this area of my professional development. If you love unit testing... this is an excellent approach… right?

There are also quizzes throughout the book. These quizzes live by themselves in another folder and can be taken separately from reading the book. If you’re impatient or advanced, :D, you could take the quizzes, see where you might be weak in your knowledge and then only read those chapters. I think this format is smart… I am reading the whole book…

Axel also gives us his opinion and observations on JavaScript. Which is excellent, it gives a personal touch to reading through the material. For example, when explaining the “typeof” operator, he lists the results against the appropriate type and notes that null returns “object” instead of null. He describes this as a bug because it doesn’t follow the pattern for the other types. He also notes that when checking function, it returns “function” which breaks the pattern and suggests that it would be better to return “object” because that would follow the pattern set by objects and arrays.

The book does cover JavaScript from what you might call the beginning. It starts with values, types, and primitives. You know the basics and moves through the rest of language one subject at a time. Callable values, you know functions and scope. The flow of the book is smooth, taking on the simpler constructs and moving to more complex with each chapter. Perfect for beginners! From there the book covers objects, prototypes, and classes. Then goes right into synchronous iteration, arrays and destructuring. He also integrates all the concepts and vocabulary you would expect from a seasoned JavaScript programmer. The last JavaScript section of this release of the book covers the call stack, event loop, promises, and async functions. 

There is one last section he calls, “Miscellaneous topics,” where he goes over TypeScript notation. He introduces TypesScript notation earlier by weaving TypeScript notation into his examples. Here he covers it as he does with the previous JavaScript sections. Learning TypeScript is on my to do list, so this was a real treat for me.

I found it mildly annoying that when the book asks you to take a quiz, the name of the quiz is not present. I found myself continually scrolling back the begging of the chapter to find the quiz’s name. Not good for stopping, working on something else and then starting again. “But in the end” it was pretty easy to navigate once I was in the flow of the book.

One thing I wanted more of were examples! I liked writing the unit tests as a method for learning the material, and I felt that some of the testing and quizzes where a bit on the light side and I wanted more! 

It’s not finished! I knew this when I set out to do a review of the book. However, when you’re having fun, you don’t want it to end!

The simple descriptions and very readable explanations are some of the best in the industry. It’s Well worth the 40 bucks. I want more and am looking forward to the next release of the book. Loved it!