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by fredophile 3311 days ago
I found JavaScript: The Good Parts useful. It's very short and gets right to the point. The author focuses on the parts of the language people tend to use every day and highlights some gotchas and common mistakes that you might not expect (like == vs ===) if you're coming in from other languages.
2 comments

IMHO, this is not a good book for learning JavasScript. It's probably a good read for someone with intermediate knowledge of JavaScript looking to expand their understanding of the language. But it covers nothing about the DOM, or how to use it on a web page, which is what virtually 100% of anyone learning JavaScript will be wanting to learn it for. So, yes you can learn the language from this book, but if you actually want to do something useful with the language you'll need to move on to another source.

And, although the book is dated, I think it still does a good job of explaining the core concepts of the language even of today.

Agree. For fun, yes but for new people to learn about JavaScript, no.
One warning: Although it's a good book, it was published in 2008 and a lot has been added to the language since then. It will give you a solid understanding of the core of the language, but for modern best practices you'll have to look elsewhere.
Agreed, I own this book and it was great several years ago but it does not include ES5, 6 and now 2016, 2017. I think you're better off learning online. Or to get started read it and then add to the knowledge here: http://es6-features.org/#Constants (whoever set up that site is great, it's helped me out).
Where would you suggest?
MDN.
Hello there jensvdh, pleased to make your acquaintance.
Always a pleasure to meet a fellow Jens!