Speaking JavaScript

Preface

Due to its prevalence on the Web and other factors, JavaScript has become hard to avoid. That doesn’t mean that it is well liked, though. With this book, I’m hoping to convince you that, while you do have to accept a fair amount of quirks when using it, JavaScript is a decent language that makes you very productive and can be fun to program in.

Even though I have followed its development since its birth, it took me a long time to warm up to JavaScript. However, when I finally did, it turned out that my prior experience had already prepared me well, because I had worked with Scheme, Java (including GWT), Python, Perl, and Self (all of which have influenced JavaScript).

In 2010, I became aware of Node.js, which gave me hope that I’d eventually be able to use JavaScript on both server and client. As a consequence, I switched to JavaScript as my primary programming language. While learning it, I started writing a book chronicling my discoveries. This is the book you are currently reading. On my blog, I published parts of the book and other material on JavaScript. That helped me in several ways: the positive reaction encouraged me to keep going and made writing this book less lonely; comments to blog posts gave me additional information and tips (as acknowledged everywhere in this book); and it made people aware of my work, which eventually led to O’Reilly publishing this book.

Therefore, this book has been over three years in the making. It has profited from this long gestation ...