Critiques de livres.

Coders at workPeter Seibel

632 pages — 🇬🇧 En anglais

This is a who's who in the programming world - a fascinating look at how some of the best in the world do their work. Patterned after the best selling Founders at Work, the book represents two years of interviews with some of the top programmers of our times.

This is the most entertaining, inspiring and interesting book I've ever read on programming. And there is not a single line of code inside! This book is huge, and trust me, you don't want it to stop.

I learned a lot about my favorite language JavaScript: why it has the shape it has today, what are the thoughts behind the scenes to make it grow and where it's headed. And you learn all of that from its creator Brendan Eich. It's hard to make it grow and keep the backward compatibility. People at TC39 are doing an amazing job!

What's interesting is that the challenges we face today as programmers are very different from what they had in the fifties (1950 — 1960) but there is a common ground and we tend to forget about the history of programming. That means that we try to solve stuff we already solved fifty years ago because we forgot about it. Working in a kind of infinite loop. We need to study the past to not reinvent the wheel all the time and make progress!

Some quotes I liked:

Being a young programmer today must be awful—you can choose 20 different programming languages, dozens of framework and operating systems and you’re paralyzed by choice.

It does go in the direction of artificial intelligence. You have to know that at some point we’re going to cross a threshold where computers will be doing a better job thinking about stuff than we do.

The author asks lots of different questions to each interviewee:

• Are there particular skills that you feel made you a good programmer?
• Is there any really big differences in how you think about programming or how you practice programming from when you learned to now?
• Is there anything you would have done differently about learning to program? Do you have any regrets about the sort of path you took or do you wish you had done anything earlier?
• How do you design software? Do you scribble on graph paper or fire up a UML tool or just start coding?
• What’s the worst bug you’ve ever had to track down? (this is a fun one)
• When you’re debugging, what tools do you use? (most of them say print !)
• Do you think of yourself as a scientist, an engineer, an artist, a craftsman, or something else?
• How do you identify talented programmers? (this one is hard to answer!)
• When you were hiring programmers what did you look for? (another hard one)
• And are there books that you think are particularly important—that either were important to you or that you would recommend people to read? (most of them say "The Art of Computer Programming" by Donald Knuth)

It was very fun to read that all programmers have different answers to these questions, sometimes even contradictory answers!

CSS3 for Web DesignersDan Cederholm

139 pages — 🇬🇧 En anglais

From advanced selectors to generated content to web fonts, and from gradients, shadows, and rounded corners to elegant animations, CSS3 holds a universe of creative possibilities. No one can better guide you through these galaxies than Dan Cederholm. In this second edition, he tackles new properties and techniques, including micro layouts. Learn what works, how it works, and how to adapt for browsers where it doesn’t.

Again, what I liked the most about this book is that you can read it extremely fast. It's very short and concise, straight to the point. You'll follow an exemple of how to enrich a boring form from scratch.

If you want a quick refresh about the new possibilites offered right now by CSS3 (animation, responsive design etc.) and the future features it will provide, read this book!

HTML5 for Web DesignersJeremy Keith & Rachel Andrew

100 pages — 🇬🇧 En anglais

HTML5 isn’t as confusing as it once was, but it still isn’t straightforward. It’s a change in the ongoing story of markup and if you’re currently creating websites, you’re already using HTML5. Harness the power of this essential evolving spec with help from Jeremy Keith and Rachel Andrew. Through clear, practical examples, you’ll be up to speed in no time.

What I liked the most about this book is that you can read it extremely fast. It's short, but full of real world examples that are carefully picked. I enjoyed reading the history of HTML, the choices behind the scene made by the W3C and where it's headed.

If you want a quick refresh about the new possibilites offered right now by HTML5 and the future features it will provide, read this book!

TOUT JavaScriptOlivier Hondermarck

384 pages — 🇫🇷 En français

Ce livre s’adresse à tous les développeurs web, qu’ils soient débutants ou avancés. Le JavaScript sert avant tout à rendre les pages web interactives et dynamiques du côté de l’utilisateur, mais il est également de plus en plus souvent utilisé côté serveur.

Ce livre en français est une introduction au langage JavaScript ES6 et au développement web en général. Il est clair, concis et plutôt bien expliqué. Les exemples employés sont utiles pour n'importe quel développeur web.

Points négatifs

Quelques regrets toutefois, les exemples de code utilisent encore la syntaxe ES5 var au lieu de let ou const et d'autres formulations qu'on aurait pu réécrire en ES6. Même si le livre a un chapitre complet sur les nouveautés ES6, le code des exemples reste écrit en ES5, dommage !

J'aurai également aimé y trouver une sorte de projet en fil rouge qu'on construit au fur et à mesure du livre mais ce n'est pas le cas. Les exemples sont tous isolés les uns des autres.

Enfin, dernier point (classique des livres sur les langages de programmation) : il paraphrase beaucoup la documentation sans faire de lien logique entre un concept et le suivant.

Points positifs

La dernière partie du livre a été pour moi la plus intéressante, elle introduit rapidement les frameworks JS populaires : jQuery, Angular, React, et comment choisir entre tel ou tel framework. Vous verrez également très succintement comment créer une app desktop et mobile de base en utilisant Electron et React-native.

Tout au long du livre, un accent est mis sur la sécurité et le SEO, deux points importants rarement mentionnés dans les livres qu'il est utile de garder en tête quand on développe un site web.

Enfin, tous les exemples sont simples et bien expliqués, on aimerait que le livre approfondisse les détails mais il fait déjà plus de 350 pages... peut être pour une suite ?

Conclusion

Je recommande ce livre si vous voulez une référence rapide sur le langage JavaScript et apprendre les concepts de base de programmation et de développement web. Le contenu reste très superficiel car on n'a pas le temps en 350 pages de rentrer dans les détails. Ce livre vous permettra d'avoir une vision globale de ce qu'il est possible de faire avec du JavaScript.

JavaScript: The Good PartsDouglas Crockford

153 pages — 🇬🇧 En Anglais

This book is about the JavaScript programming language. It is intended for programmers who have been working with JavaScript at a novice/intermediate level and are now ready for a more sophisticated relationship with the language.

This book was amazing! I wrote a complete review here: JavaScript: The Good Parts — Honest Book Review.

Eloquent Javascript 3rd EditionMarijn Haverbeke

447 pages — 🇬🇧 En Anglais

This is a book about JavaScript, programming, and the wonders of the digital.

I'm still reading this one... It's hard to reat, I do NOT recommend this for beginners (everyone recommends it on Reddit for beginners, don't listen to them!).

Resilient Web DesignJeremy Keith

150 pages — 🇬🇧 En Anglais

With a title like Resilient Web Design, you might think that this is a handbook for designing robust websites. This is not a handbook. It’s more like a history book.

I was hooked immediately on this one, it explains how we arrived in the Web we know today starting from the birth of Internet through the rise of mobile phones and tablets.

You'll learn about browsers wars, how designers used tables to layout first website, why CSS was rejected first and how it finally got adopted later.

This one is also quick to read and very useful to understand how Internet works and the onion layers beneath it.

Hello Web DesignTracy Osborn

154 pages — 🇬🇧 En Anglais

Learn basic design theory, design thinking, and shortcuts, aimed at developers, marketers, and non-designers.

I read this book in 2 days, I absolutely loved it! It will teach you 80% of everything you need to know to become a good enough designer to make great websites.

The rest you'll learn it through experience. It nails down all the common mistakes web developers make when designing websites and gives you concrete examples on how to fix them.

The book is concise, precise, and quick to read but you'll learn a ton from it. I absolutely recommend it! This is a must read if you start web design!