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In regards to the book's online version, I like how it has code examples that one can edit and run inline among the book's text. I often find myself, while reading a book on a particular language, opening up a new project in an IDE or a REPL in order to fiddle around with what the book it trying to teach. This makes it much more fluid.

It was a pleasant surprise. It is a nice concept I have not previously seen done. (I'm sure someone can come up with examples of where it has previously been done before but this is the first I personally have seen it.)

I just wish we had hi-res, color, e-ink monitors with quick refresh rate. I can't bring myself to read an entire book online; even if it's free.
If you like Python, check out How To Think Like A Computer Scientist (http://interactivepython.org). It's aimed at introductory CS classes, but the inline interactivity is pretty cool! (Shameless plug: a couple of my professors developed this, and I spent last summer contributing to it).
That's neat, generally I like physical books better but that really shows the potential of ebooks. I've been working on something similar for the JavaScript/browser APIs (http://www.javascripture.com) since I learn a lot better when running code myself.
Good read. After you finish this book I'd suggest the free Javascript Allonge https://leanpub.com/javascript-allonge/read An excellent intermediate/advanced javascript book.
Seconded.

I'm currently using it as a beginners Javascript book and find it extremely accessible.

I've been following this book for a while now and I'm pretty thrilled to see its reception here on HN. This book is an excellent introduction to front-end development (and even a little backend since it does include a chapter on Node.js)

It has an excellent balance of design patterns and introductory knowledge to attract the new and also seasoned developers who are beginning to look at javascript more seriously.

(This book is also a great primer for anyone who did not understand Javascript the Good Parts)

Any idea if this book would be a waste of time if the good parts sunk in easily?
This was a great reference when I started learning JavaScript. It just didn't go over the language, but also gave a great history of programming in general and why JavaScript is structured how it is. A lot has changed in JS land since the first version came out so I look forward to have the author tackles it/
Agreed. This book's conversational style and carefully-worded explanations of core concepts from multiple paradigms helped me begin to grok javascript beyond just $('.that-thing-there').doStuff();
This is the best Javascript tutorial out there, and I was eagerly looking forward to this update. From glancing at the text, however, it seems that it doesn't cover the very significant upgrades introduced by ECMAScript 6 "Harmony".

Seeing that the standard is already being finalized towards a release in 4 months[1], this seems like an unfortunate omission in an otherwise top-notch text.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECMAScript#ECMAScript_Harmony_....

I considered (and actually started writing) an extra chapter on ES6, but the current state of the standard is poorly documented and still in flux. Also, it's a huge standard, so it'd have taken two or three chapters at least to cover it properly.

For something that won't be supported for a while yet (without using a transpiler), that seemed too much bother. I might add such chapters in the future.

Kind of a cheap shot, don't you think? Standards and browser adoption are two completely different things. It will be years before anyone tries using ES6 features in JavaScript and expects most browsers to understand them.
Inspite of all the criticism that Javascript gets it's so easy to just dive in and start messing around. The game projects seem like a lot of fun.
Great book but... is it finished yet? Doesn't seem so [1].

[1] https://github.com/marijnh/Eloquent-JavaScript

According to Marijn Haverbeke's twitter feed[0]:

"I am happy to announce that the online edition of Eloquent JavaScript's 2nd edition is done, and online at " http://eloquentjavascript.net

[0] https://twitter.com/marijnjh/status/494433950505644032

It more or less is, apart from some further proofreading. I forgot to update the README file.
The original version is one of the readings that I suggest for experienced engineers on our team who are new to working with JavaScript.
I am both quite happy and a little sad that the chapter on functional programming was nixed from the first edition.

It was way over the heads of the beginners the book was aimed at, but it sure was fun to try and figure out.

Is that stuff in the chapter called higher order functions now?

http://eloquentjavascript.net/05_higher_order.html

As I understand audience of the book is both experienced programmers and who hasn't done programming before. Can anyone please comment if it will be boring for experienced programmers (who are new to javascript) or not?
The first few chapters will probably be a bit slow. But it ramps up pretty quickly around chapter 5.
I've been wanting to read this. Sweet: https://gist.github.com/g-P/cbdfd4a4b982ba8fa04b
The github page for the book has a makefile that creates a pdf of the book.

The book was written for both computer and pdf, so you should really build the PDF from the code to get the parts of the text that have been altered for print. If you just PDF the html, you end up with some weird things from the interactive parts.

You can find the build targets here: https://github.com/marijnh/Eloquent-JavaScript/blob/master/M...

I want to learn decent amount of HTML/CSS/JS to beautify and improve the usability of my webpage. What would be a good source to learn these things?
When I started this about 8 years ago or so, i used [this book](http://www.headfirstlabs.com/books/hfhtml/). It's structured as a case study, a coffee shop owner who wants to make a small webpage.

It's amazing how it's well written and fun to read. I like it puts some effort in showing you quickly the benefit of what you learned, you never get the impression something is pointless. (NB: it's big but you don't have to read it all. I read say the first half, than used it more like a reference book.)

Looking forward to reading it. Is there a place to report bugs I noticed a type in the first chapter

"Casual computing has become become much "

github link given later - may be report bug there, or just send a pull request : https://github.com/marijnh/Eloquent-JavaScript
Why is the paper book delayed until november? also the paper book says it has 400 pages, does the paper book has more content?
It'll have a single bonus chapter. But the current text, as it is online, already takes up 390 pages when typeset in No Starch's house style.
Book will have much larger font
Excellent. I've been awaiting this one. I'm at the perfect sweet spot to make maximum use of it.

And I do love good writing...

Question to author: Why did you choose CC-BY-NC when you also make your contents available under MIT licence?
Always wanted to take the time to complete this book. Looking forward to diving into the 2nd edition.
This is a bit off topic but does someone know how this book is generated, which tools are used?
An unholy chain of asciidoc and node scripts. The sources are at https://github.com/marijnh/Eloquent-JavaScript
Would anyone recommend this after already going through the good parts by Douglas Crockford?
Mobi or epub version anyone?
The sources (https://github.com/marijnh/Eloquent-JavaScript) are written in ASCIIdoc which has an epub export. So it should be easy to build one yourself.
Should I buy/read the second edition when I already own the first one?
I thoroughly enjoyed the first edition, looking forward to this.
blah
"These ideas were initially worked out in the 1970s and 80s, and, in the 90s, were carried up by a huge wave of hype—the object-oriented programming revolution. Suddenly, there was a large tribe of people declaring that objects were the right way to program, and that anything that did not involve objects was outdated nonsense.

That kind of zealotry always produces a lot of impractical silliness, and there has been a sort of counter-revolution since then. In some circles, objects have a rather bad reputation nowadays."

Eloquent JS, maybe, eloquent writing. Not in this book.