[sixQuarks]

Definitely NOT recommended for absolute beginners. I tried reading this as one of my first programming books and it confused the hell out of me. There are much better introductory books/courses - my recommendation is "Watch and Code - Practical Javascript" if you are an absolute beginner and want to learn javascript.

https://watchandcode.com/p/practical-javascript

Eloquent Javascript is a good book now that I know more about Javascript, but please NEVER EVER recommend it as the first book for an absolute beginner.

[ealexhudson]

Have to agree with this. I was just reading through to try to figure out its pitch, and was struck by this (early on): "To create a value, you must merely invoke its name. This is convenient. You don’t have to gather building material for your values or pay for them. You just call for one, and whoosh, you have it"

I mean, that's totally correct, but that's paragraph 7. It's way too abstract for a beginner to understand - and usually, if a beginner is getting lost in the first few pages, they're unlikely to make progress in the book (even though they probably could in this case, by skipping ahead a bit).

[terrycody]

marked this,thx, btw, I always want to choose head first series to be my 1st book, what do ya think compare with eloquent JS for absolute beginner?

[sixQuarks]

I skimmed through head first, it seems pretty good but similar to a lot of other books. The watch and code course is different and I just think it’s so on point for the absolute beginner, or at least how I like to learn.

With 20/20 hindsight, what I wish I had done is read through or watch one or two courses without any pressure, just get familiar with the topic, and don’t worry if I don’t understand things.

things start clicking into place after you’re exposed to this stuff a few times. My mistake was that I wanted to understand everything and didn’t want to skip ahead if I didn’t.