Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #378159 in Books
• Brand: imusti
• Published on: 2014-03-03
• Released on: 2014-03-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.19" h x .69" w x 7.00" l, .0 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 306 pages

Features

• O Reilly Media

About the Author

Customer Reviews

Most helpful customer reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Outstanding introduction for non-web app developers
By Santos
I highly recommend this book to anyone who is already experienced in something other than web app development and wishes to quickly introduce him or herself to the field. In my opinion, the primary benefit from the book is the emphasis on the various layers (e.g. client side, web server, database repositories, communications between the layers, etc.) that are involved within web app development. This begins to frame the range of considerations and responsibilities that are expected within this type of development. This delineation can help focus one's efforts when beginning to focus their subsequent studies. This is why I think that the complaint by another review that "[t]he book is targeted at someone who has basic programming skills who wants to learn to build a basic web app" is unfair and actually what makes this book excellent.

Besides the broad understanding that this book provides, the secondary benefit that the books provides is its description of a whole range of software tools that are useful at the various infrastructure levels (including the use virtual machines) which are relevant to many developers (admittedly not all developers) as of 2014. Naturally the tools will change with time, but the main ideas and techniques that are introduced are likely, in my opinion, to survive for years to come.

As to whether this book is appropriate for brand new developers is a tough call. For a new developer, it will be challenging to consider the big picture that is introduced in this book, and the various tools that are demonstrated to provide an end-to-end demonstration web app. That is a daunting task. Fortunately, the book is loaded with references for further learning, including suggestions about pre-requisites and where they can be found for free.

I currently know of no better single book on web app development that teaches so much so quickly. If your style of learning is to start off with breadth and later go for depth then this is an outstanding place to start.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
An excellent start for a would-be front end developer
By P. Mumford
This is a very good book on web application development in javascript. If you are just starting out, and want to learn the whole stack (HTML, CSS, Javascript, and all the little bits on how to set up your development environment), this is the book you need. Purewal ties the whole thing together, and he does it gradually. You probably won't get flooded (often).

I am a front end developer, and I bought this book for the second half, on javascript. What I really like about this book is that Purewal gets the importance of Javascript, and where it fits into web apps these days. This is different from other javascript texts that read like they were written for a different era (they probably were) when JS was a bit of a rogue language. This book was written for 2015, which is the era of the javascript framework, when the all cutting edge shops want javascript devs. Javascript has become the top language of the web.

The middle section also happens to the the single best into-to-javascript text that I know of. First Purewal has the reader doing simple DOM manipulation with jquery. Then he switches to vanilla JS, and has the reader create simple arrays and objects, and create functions to do stuff with them. His answer to the common question "to jquery or not to jquery", his answer is both. Which I think if is the right answer.

One thing Purewal does not cover is any front end framework, such as Backbone, Angular, React, etc. I think after finishing this, you would be ready to move on to one of those choices. For my own work, I started using Angular shortly after finishing this book.

I would give this 5 stars but the book is unfortunately too short. Is an awesome start, but there is a lot more ground to be covered. Maybe there will be a sequel. I'm hoping.

[edit] I've upped my rating from four to five stars. Looking over the book again, I think this book succeeds perfectly in its objective: to launch beginners into the world of application development. And although its short, Purewal does cover all the key topics, and provides links for further study. I'm benefitting from a second working of the book now.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Great for beginners and intermediates
By ekw
I purchased this book primarily for the chapters on JavaScript, JSON, and AJAX. I've been working with HTML and CSS for quite some time so I just skimmed those chapters. However, even tho the HTML and CSS chapters are basic (to me) in some ways, they actually reinforce some best practices that I was glad to be reminded of. I think the book has a clear intention of teaching best practices in programming and for that reason alone it's great for students. The chapters on Node, Mongo, and Redis were the most challenging for me because of my little experience with NoSQL databases and server side programming.

The book outlines a college level course, so it has to assume some students are more beginner than others, but it does a great job of providing valuable exercises for all levels. The instruction is clear and thorough, and the examples at the end of each chapter are great for practice. I feel that I have an invaluable study tool in this book.