REreplies-to-fool·Aug 27, 2020Submission
YDKJS: The Pillars of JavaScript
1 points · Open discussiongetify
You-Dont-Know-JS
Web Development2013–2025
getify / You-Dont-Know-JS
You-Dont-Know-JS
A book series (2 published editions) on the JS language.
119Distinct people
133Mentions
5Explicit recommenders
184.8KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
A book series (2 published editions) on the JS language.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
I recommend this book https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS It discusses great edge cases of JS while explaining why or how come they are like this where possible.
gls2ro used a recommendation phrase. 5 indexed comments match. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.
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Also in these discussions
- markerikson/react-redux-links · linked in 2 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 6:01:32 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year133 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2013-11-20 18:38:59 UTC to 2025-03-17 16:51:17 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2014 | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 8 | 1 | 7 |
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 9 | 1 | 8 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 23 | 3 | 20 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 35 | 1 | 34 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 13 | 2 | 11 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 8 | 2 | 6 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 17 | 3 | 14 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 0 | 7 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 2 | 2 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 0 | 5 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
What Hacker News says
17 sourcesThe first one clearly isn't intended for already competent programmers.
The focus of the second one doesn't seem to be on teaching the JavaScript language. [0]
The third one looks like the best bet, but it's still not explicitly aimed at an audience of already competent programmers. [1]
[0] https://leanpub.com/javascriptallongesix/read#leanpub-auto-a...
[1] https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS/blob/2nd-ed/get-s...
In Going the Other WayPerhaps one of these 3 will be of help to you:
https://eloquentjavascript.net/
https://leanpub.com/javascriptallongesix
https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS
In Going the Other Way> It’s a massive antipattern.
Yes! I used to be on-the-fence about this, but then had to try and decipher code like YDKJS’s `run` [0]. Four levels of nested functions!
Python’s syntax makes this sort of thing impossible, which I now consider to be a good thing.
[0] https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS/blob/1st-ed/async...
In Brython – A Python 3 implementation for client-side web programmingAs a primarily frontend developer, I've had a couple of good experiences helping some experienced backend developers work through You Don't Know JS[0].
[0] https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS
In JavaScript for Impatient ProgrammersMy two favorites are YDKJS (You Don't Know Javascript)[1], and Eloquent Javascript[2].
[1]https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS
[2]https://eloquentjavascript.net/
In JavaScript for Impatient ProgrammersA good way to not be completely overwhelmed by all the new tooling and frameworks is to have a strong grasp of the fundamentals, here are three foundational resources:
"You don't know JS": https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS
"How browsers work": https://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/internals/howbrowser...
"High performance browser networking": https://hpbn.co/
In Do Not Follow JavaScript TrendsI highly recommend working through YDKJS[1] if you have an interest in and/or a reason to "master" JavaScript.
I think you may find that some of those "bad design decisions" are actually not so bad, or at least manageable, once you will have read through the book.
1. https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS
In Show HN: C0D3 – A free, interactive site to learn codingread "you don't know JS" series of books, also second edition https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS I find the workshops very helpful as well, which I've watched through my oreilly membership don't know if you can find them elsewhere, I would suggest combine this with reading the specs.
on edit: one reason the specs are not enough is generally specs will tell you what needs to be implemented but a good book, like these ones, will tell you how it has been implemented or what the spec implies for implementation and what all that will mean for you as a user of the language.
In Eloquent JavaScript 3rd Edition (2018)if you can't find something you didn't already know in the free book series "you don't know javascript" then I'd imagine you might not have any gaps in your knowledge. (at least for 99% of it)
(you can buy a hard copy of it if you want but it's open source)
https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS/blob/1st-ed/READM...
In Eloquent JavaScript 3rd Edition (2018)[Eloquent Javascript](https://eloquentjavascript.net/) -- A general intro to JS/Programming.
[Javascript: The Good Parts](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596517748.do) -- Once something makes it into Javascript, it's there forever. While this book only covers up to ES5, it creates a good foundation for things to use and things to avoid. This is especially relevant if you wind up working with older codebases.
[Exploring ES6](https://exploringjs.com/es6/) -- This book will take you from the ES5 land into the world of ES6 (ES 2015). It does NOT cover newer features from ES2016-ES2019, but only a couple of those are major updates.
[Javascript Allonge](https://leanpub.com/javascriptallongesix/read) -- A nice, soft introduction to functional JS concepts.
[You don't know JS](https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS/blob/2nd-ed/READM...) --
Read the rest
an overview of the language feature by feature. I feel it's a bit too advanced for an introduction on quite a few things though.
I'd avoid Javascript: The Definitive Guide. It doesn't do a great job of distinguishing between the good and bad parts of the language and some examples aren't best practice anymore. Maybe they'll get around to creating a 7th edition one day that'll be worth reading. Likewise, I'd avoid reading the spec until you've worked with the language for a while. It's not light reading. I'd start with the 5.1 edition because it's much easier to approach (and much smaller at only around 250 pages). Once you've read that, it'll make reading the newer specs much easier (ES2019 spec is over 3x as long).
Definitely a great course, started learning JS using that one.
After watching that I would recommend https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS and that should give one a solid base.
In Ask HN: How do I learn JavaScript?Read the You Don't Know JS series [0] - this tackles much of what people with mediocre proficiency overlook. To go beyond that you would probably want to dive deep in to the ECMAScript specs [1] to really master the language. I don't think it will be that hard, just a slog.
[0] - https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS
[1] - https://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ec...
In Ask HN: How do I learn JavaScript?Agree with op, the above link https://eloquentjavascript.net is a good resource to checkout.
I have bookmarked few other links from HN
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13979472
https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS
https://www.robinwieruch.de/javascript-fundamentals-react-re...
In Ask HN: How do I learn JavaScript?To me, the nice part of JS is that you can get pretty far without knowing the language intricately. So you can actually get started and be somewhat productive while picking up more knowledge along the way. The front-end ecosystem is so broad that it's hard to focus only on vanilla JS anyway.
That said, if you want a comprehensive read about Javascript, there's You don't know JS:
https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS
In Ask HN: How do I learn JavaScript?Showing the 15 most recent of 17 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.