Books To Read Before Interview
Today I found on prismatic interesting post about what to read before interview.
It is really worth recommending because of language agnostic list of books and some best for your language.
http://codingforinterviews.com/books
For JavaScript it is Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja by John Resig. If you don't know him, then at least you should know jQuery which is his library. Book is pretty new so I haven't read it yet but look really promising.
Edit: Some of my friends told me that book is not so fun to read (they are rather advanced so it's hard to tell without reading what is my opinion, but maybe consider also opinions on Amazon before buying)
The easiest to see is how much books about Design Patterns are recommended. Personally I used to think about them as stupid. Most of us know them at basic level and in my opinion it should suffice.
I know that it will work for sad projects, but when you create something new, that you have no idea how it should work it is mistake to throw at it 7 design patters. Next week from that point client have new idea about how it should work, or maybe you misunderstood them, and there is now time to change those design patterns that you spend 2 days to implement in project, and hacking and bad things happen. You should get idea what I mean.
I'm not against it in general, but always consider the Context.
Design patters are great if:
- You know what you're doing (expertise in business your building for, and at least on project done for that business)
- You have working code and you see places where commonly known design patters will fit.
Another good examples of Design Patters you can see in JavaScript Patterns. Build Better Applications with Coding and Design Patterns by Stoyan Stefanov. Book is only partly about classical Design Patters. Most of the book is about good practices in JavaScript, about JsLint, hacks, common problems, inheritance types with it's benefits and drawbacks. I liked this book because of how pragmatic it is.
So here comes my list of books for JavaScript:
- Eloquent JavaScript by Marijn Haverbeke
- JavaScript Patterns. Build Better Applications with Coding and Design Patterns by Stoyan Stefanov (keep in mind that it's mostly about best practices than design patters)
- Async JavaScript: Build More Responsive Apps with Less Code by Trevor Burnham
- Test-Driven JavaScript Development by Christian Johansen
On my reading list but recommended by friends:
- Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja by John Resig
- Maintanable JavaScript by Nicholas C. Zakas
- Effective JavaScript by David Herman
For learning JavaScript MDN has really good start point: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/learn/javascript
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