[derstander]

I've been trying to learn a bit more JavaScript myself. I'm an engineer by trade but I've worked on some web applications, so I have some practical experience with JavaScript (for typical front-end as well as with Meteor for full-stack). Despite that practical experience, I didn't feel that I had a solid understanding of JavaScript outside of libraries and frameworks.

I'm personally going through Haverbeke's "Eloquent JavaScript" -- both reading the chapters and completing all of the exercises. The 2nd Edition is written with ES5 in mind, the 3rd with ES6. The latter is only available online currently -- a print edition is stated to be in the works.

To practice my JavaScript, I joined a couple game jams where I used Phaser to build a couple small games over the course of a couple weekends. It was a mixed bag: I felt that I was learning the nuances of Phaser rather than strengthening my general JavaScript knowledge. I've been trying to replicate the "immersion" experience with JavaScript, though I've only been able to use it for personal projects at home: I can't use it at work (we build our analysis tools in MATLAB or Python, there's little experience in our group in JavaScript, and JavaScript is not typically used in our discipline).

[1] http://eloquentjavascript.net/