It’s always exciting to see the first review of a book that I’ve written. This time, Stephen Chapman of about.com is the first to review Professional JavaScript for Web Developers, 2nd Edition. He writes in his review:

This book has undergone a major rewrite since its first edition three years ago. The book is now bigger and better than before and a must have for every experienced programmer who writes JavaScript.

Wow, pretty high praise! What I’ve always liked about Stephen is that he’s not just technically knowledgeable, he seems to really understand why books are written a certain way. One of my goals was to make sure that this was considered a “professional” book, meaning that it doesn’t hold your hand and teach you what variables and functions are. It assumes that you already know all the programming concepts you’ll need and tries to relate that to JavaScript. A couple of quotes from his review that really signaled to me that he understood what I was going for:

Rather than introducing JavaScript the way most JavaScript for beginners books do by covering small parts of the language that will allow you to get started, this book covers each aspect of the language thoroughly in a way that even those with an intermediate level of knowledge of JavaScript can use the book to extend their knowledge of how to better utilise JavaScript.

…

The order in which the information is presented in this book is significantly different from the way most other JavaScript books handle it which makes the book into a useful reference for experienced JavaScript programmers as each subject is covered in great depth all in the one place rather than being limited to what a beginner would understand on first reading.

Whenever I see a reviewer say that, “this book is unlike other JavaScript books,” then I feel like I’ve succeeded. This is exactly what I was going for and I’m heartened to know that Stephen got it. I hope everyone else gets it too.

Oh, and his overall rating. Five stars! Thanks Stephen!