Top all-time · #698
Axel Rauschmayer
Personal blog · exploringjs.comprogrammingweb
Axel Rauschmayer writes Exploring JavaScript: temporarily offline, a personal blog at exploringjs.com about programming and web. Since 2015, 92 different Hacker News readers have linked it 145 times, most often “Exploring JavaScript: JavaScript books for programmers”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Sometimes recommended · 12 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Axel Rauschmayer's Exploring JS books, which are free online, as thorough references for JavaScript and ECMAScript features. Commenters recommend them for learning the language and for getting past the spec.
- Recommended for · 12 comments
- Commenters call the free books thorough, readable and excellent, and recommend them for learning JavaScript.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Exploring JavaScript: JavaScript books for programmers11 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2021-06-10
- Show HN: JavaScript books, free online10 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2015-10-10
- Free book: JavaScript for impatient programmers8 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2020-02-19
- /7 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2017-04-13
- Exploring ES66 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2015-10-26
- Tackling TypeScript: Upgrading from JavaScript4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-06-09
- JavaScript for Impatient Programmers4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-08-10
- Deep JavaScript: Theory and Techniques4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-12-13
- Deep JavaScript: Metaprogramming with Proxies3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-08-17
- JavaScript for Impatient Programmers3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-06-30
What Hacker News says?
TS v5.8 added the --erasableSyntaxOnly option, along with Node.js 23.6 so you can run your TS in Node, which will error on enums (as well as namespaces and other syntax). I haven't found anything that mentions the deprecation of enums when searching, TS v6 is supposed to be as feature compatible with v7 as possible, and since enums are not a type-level feature of JS I wouldn't rely on them. Right now you can make us…
Comment linking /tackling-ts/ch_enum-alternatives.html
on “A 10x Faster TypeScript”Submitted Deep JavaScript as a story · 337 points
HN discussionMy go-to JavaScript book will always remain “JavaScript for impatient programmers”[1], a 639-page book written by Dr. Axel, PhD. It's quite complete and detailed. But as if it wasn't enough the author wrote a second (smaller book) named “Deep JavaScript: Theory and techniques”[2]. Both are free to read online! [1] https://exploringjs.com/impatient-js/ [2] https://exploringjs.com/deep-js/index.html
Comment linking /deep-js/index.html
on “Eloquent JavaScript 4th edition (2024)”Submitted JavaScript for Impatient Programmers as a story · 284 points
HN discussionI’d recommend trying the graded exercises in https://www.coursera.org/specializations/data-structures-alg... or https://www.edx.org/course/data-structures-an-active-learnin... — unfortunately, for the most benefit (online automatic grading), you’ll have to pay either EdX or Coursera, but EdX offers a small sample of exercises to start, if I recall correctly. And there are a few more courses after those. If you’re an…
Comment linking /impatient-js/ch_sets.html
on “Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?”Submitted JavaScript for Impatient Programmers as a story · 239 points
HN discussion> I've been doing web development for decades and I don't have a clue what those lines of code are doing. I don't think that's reacts fault? http://exploringjs.com/es6/index.html#toc_ch_first-steps Other than the es6 syntax, would you like to specify what it is that you don't understand? If you look at it, it must occur to you that react components are functions that can receive properties and return markup. Now you…
Comment linking /es6/index.html
on “React 16”Submitted Show HN: JavaScript books, free online as a story · 222 points
HN discussionI'm actually working through this book right now. I've been away from front-end coding for a bit and my weekend/evening project over the next month is to brush up on modern Javascript and ReactJS. This book is very well written and great re-introduction to JS/programming fundamentals. For those interested--Besides this book, my current learning plan includes: Javascript 30 by WesBos Exploring ES6 [ http://exploringj…
Comment linking /es6/
on “Eloquent JavaScript 3rd Edition (2018)”Submitted Deep JavaScript: Theory and Techniques as a story · 206 points
HN discussionHow I learned ES6: I have a 1 hour commute each way. When I was learning ES6, I spent roughly half my commute creating Anki cards and half my commute studying those cards. I created cards by going through this excellent free online book (I skipped chapters I wasn't interested in): http://exploringjs.com/es6/index.html The process of creating cards: (A) read a paragraph. (B) make flashcards for everything new introdu…
Comment linking /es6/index.html
on “To Remember Everything You Learn, Surrender to This Algorithm (2008)”Submitted Environments: under the hood of variables – Deep JavaScript chapter as a story · 96 points
HN discussionDr. Rauschmayer also has several books free to read online available here http://exploringjs.com/ . I definitely recommend his books they are often quite thorough.
Comment linking /
on “ECMAScript 2017 Language Specification”Submitted Exploring ES6 as a story · 26 points
HN discussionAnd https://exploringjs.com/tackling-ts/
Comment linking /tackling-ts/
on “Tricks I wish I knew when I learned TypeScript”Submitted Asynchronous JavaScript in four chapters – promises, foundations, explained as a story · 24 points
HN discussionYou hope and you hope... and then they ship a Set without any useful built-in methods: https://exploringjs.com/impatient-js/ch_sets.html#missing-se... Because ... variety of reasons, see tis comment thread: https://twitter.com/bakkoting/status/1488363368268251138
Comment linking /impatient-js/ch_sets.html
on “Don't make me think, or why I switched to Rails from JavaScript SPAs”Submitted “Deep JavaScript” is now available online as a story · 12 points
HN discussionLiterally on that page, emphasis mine: === start quote === To share memory using SharedArrayBuffer objects from one agent in the cluster to another (an agent is either the web page’s main program or one of its web workers), postMessage and structured cloning is used . === end quote === And, of course, they are almost exclusively used with Web Workers because it makes zero sense to use them in the context of a single…
Comment linking /es2016-es2017/ch_shared-array-buffer.html
on “HTML and CSS techniques to reduce your JavaScript”Submitted Exploring JavaScript (ES2024 Edition) as a story · 6 points
HN discussionIt’s still opaque string blobs no matter how you try to dress them up. —- I should probably edit this: It’s still string blobs that are totally opaque to the browser, and that are parsed with regular expressions[1] at runtime[2] and dumped into DOM via innerHtml[3]. [1] https://github.com/Polymer/lit-html/blob/61c08a615abadbe58bc... [2] http://exploringjs.com/es6/ch_template-literals.html [3] https://github.com/Poly…
Comment linking /es6/ch_template-literals.html
on “Web Components could replace frontend frameworks?”Submitted JavaScript for Impatient Programmers as a story · 5 points
HN discussionAI has come for those blog posts and news articles. There's very little incentive for people to invest in quality content anymore - I'm seeing things like this more with many others just quietly stopping: https://exploringjs.com/
Comment linking /
on “Doomscrolling ourselves to death”Submitted Exploring JavaScript: JavaScript books for programmers as a story · 5 points
HN discussionTrue, I'm not much into client side programming, just learning and lectures like this or Axel Rauschmayer's[1] are gold sources to understand Javascript. [1] http://exploringjs.com/es6/
Comment linking /es6/
on “JavaScript. The Core: 2nd Edition”Submitted Exploring ES6 as a story · 5 points
HN discussionYou need to understand JavaScript and the ecosystem. Even if you're going to be writing TypeScript, other people will probably be using regular JavaScript. But TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript, so it shouldn't be very difficult to pick it up. You need to learn to crawl before you can walk, as they say. If you want to develop an in-depth understanding of the language, I suggest reading through the ExploringJS […
Comment linking /
on “Why We Chose Typescript”Submitted Exploring JavaScript (ES2025 Edition) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionIt may seem odd, but it got clear to me once I understood the basic idea. In a language like Java you have objects and classes at the bottom of the language. How would you add maps to the language? Well, you create a Map class, implement put, get, has methods, etc. Now imagine a language where you have functions and maps as your basic primitives, but you don't have classes and objects. How do you add objects and cla…
Comment linking /impatient-js/ch_proto-chains-classes.html
on “JavaScript Is Weird”Submitted Exploring JavaScript (ES2024 Edition) as a story · 4 points
HN discussion
