Re: A Newbie's Must-Have Library

[Andy Dingley]

On 15 May, 04:55, Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_.. [e-mail] e:

Well, in case anyone should need to know in the near future, here are
my recommendations for best beginner's books:

Or in another universe, where things are understood and site code is
stable and reliable, beginners don't even think about reading
JavaScript books until they've written some HTML and CSS.

You need it _VERY_ rarely. Using it without a foundation of good HTML
understanding leads to trouble. Few people can learn both from scratch
simultaneously, so it's useful to really grok the first first, which
means getting some hands-on and actually building content that way.

I write sites that use JavaScript for a vanishingly small proportion
of pages. They just don't need it. I work (for money) on complex web
apps that are built up almost entirely of JavaScript. We don't write
this by hand, because it's impossible to write large amounts of
JavaScript in an efficient manner. This stuff is all generated server-
side by frameworks like JSF & Facelets.

[joebloe]

On May 18, 9:01 pm, Peter Michaux <petermich...@g mail.comwrote:

John Resig posted a payment statement for his first book. If I
remember correctly, he had made something like a couple thousand
dollars for the months he spent writing the book. It just isn't worth
it when you consider an experienced JavaScript contractor may be
making up to $150/hr.

The reason you write a book is for recognition, or just because you
feel like it. As a matter of personal experience, Effective Perl
Programming got me years of onsite training gigs paying gross in
multiple hundreds of dollars per hour.

[joebloe]

On May 19, 12:40 am, Ben C <spams...@spam. eggswrote:

On 2008-05-19, Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_.. [e-mail] e:

On May 17, 5:48 am, Ben C <spams...@spam. eggswrote:

[...]

(though I plan on using JavaScript for an interactive game, too --
only, a very simple and simplistic one)....

Just to give you an idea of what's possible:

http://www.janis.or.jp/users/segabit...riptMaryo.html

This is cool, but Javascript is capable of supporting *much* more
complex games than that. In particular, code that doesn't manipulate
the DOM now runs quite quickly (I mean, with a multiple GHz CPU, how
would it not? There's only so much overhead you can layer onto
arithmetic, strings, and loops), and you can put a whole lot of logic
in 100k+ bytes of minified code. Also, how you make your DOM updates
makes a big difference. And finally, the next generation of browsers
are going to have much more efficient JS interpreters.

[Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn]

joebloe wrote:

On May 18, 9:01 pm, Peter Michaux <petermich...@g mail.comwrote:

>John Resig posted a payment statement for his first book. If I
remember correctly, he had made something like a couple thousand
dollars for the months he spent writing the book. It just isn't worth
it when you consider an experienced JavaScript contractor may be
making up to $150/hr.

The reason you write a book is for recognition, or just because you
feel like it.

Yes, competence seldom enters into it.
F'up2 cljs

PointedEars
--
Use any version of Microsoft Frontpage to create your site.
(This won't prevent people from viewing your source, but no one
will want to steal it.)
-- from <http://www.vortex-webdesign.com/help/hidesource.htm>

[Andy Dingley]

On 19 May, 18:47, joebloe <remid0d...@gma il.comwrote:

The reason you write a book is for recognition, or just because you
feel like it.

You've still got to pay the rent in the meantime.

[joebloe]

On May 19, 11:42 am, Andy Dingley <ding...@codesm iths.comwrote:

On 19 May, 18:47, joebloe <remid0d...@gma il.comwrote:

The reason you write a book is for recognition, or just because you
feel like it.

You've still got to pay the rent in the meantime.

If you can't write your first book or three in your spare time, you're
probably not going to write a book.

[Andy Dingley]

On 19 May, 20:36, joebloe <remid0d...@gma il.comwrote:

On May 19, 11:42 am, Andy Dingley <ding...@codesm iths.comwrote:

On 19 May, 18:47, joebloe <remid0d...@gma il.comwrote:

The reason you write a book is for recognition, or just because you
feel like it.

You've still got to pay the rent in the meantime.

If you can't write your first book or three in your spare time, you're
probably not going to write a book.

You can't write (most) IT books in your spare time, publishing
timescales don't permit it. They need that ms _now_, before the
competition gets their book out on the hot new topic.

Maybe for HTML, CSS or JavaScript this timescale is more relaxed.
They've been around 10 years and most of the decent books have only
emerged fairly recently.

[Andy Dingley]

On 19 May, 04:45, Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_.. [e-mail] e:

Sadly true - just read Spolsky's infamous "Java schools" tirade.
However this doesn't mean that the smart people aren't using it too.

Something is definitely in the air...I mean, we had G.W. for President
twice....

You blame Bush being an idiot on him having learned _Java_?! That's
pretty extreme.

[joebloe]

On May 20, 3:29 am, Andy Dingley <ding...@codesm iths.comwrote:

You can't write (most) IT books in your spare time, publishing
timescales don't permit it. They need that ms _now_, before the
competition gets their book out on the hot new topic.

Maybe for HTML, CSS or JavaScript this timescale is more relaxed.
They've been around 10 years and most of the decent books have only
emerged fairly recently.

This is entirely untrue in the case of reputable publishers like A-W
and PH. I've dealt with editors there for 10 years and they do *not*
work like that. You are simply wrong. I can't overemphasize how wrong
you are. You can't even do tech reviews, copy editing, proofreading,
cover (which the author will approve), and layout (which the author
also will approve) in that amount of time. Quality publishers do
produce books on emerging technologies on a timely basis, but that's
because the experts who are creating that technology are the ones
writing books for them.

If you're talking about books with thick fluorescent green spines,
yes, those publishers do work that way and they want books written in
about 3 months. But on the other hand they don't care if the book is
accurate or even if it makes sense. They really don't do technical
review, and the copy editing and proofreading are cursory. I used to
informally measure the quality of that kind of book by counting the
number of pages per major error, as in, something the author got wrong
in a way that would mislead a reader and/or demonstrated the author's
lack of understanding. Somewhere between 4 and 10 pages was typical.
Usually 4.

[Andy Dingley]

On 20 May, 21:04, joebloe <remid0d...@gma il.comwrote:

I've dealt with editors there for 10 years and they do *not*
work like that. You are simply wrong. I can't overemphasize how wrong
you are.

Can I give you my editor's email address? 8-)

All I know is that _I'm_ under pressure with a deadline. As my Mother
died recently and my elderly Dad has now decided he's a teapot, this
isn't making life any easier.

[joebloe]

On May 22, 10:48 am, Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_.. [e-mail]>
wrote:

So is JavaScript a "full-fledged" programming language now?? I always
thought it was just a glorified macro for web-browsers, like macros in
word-processors.

JavaScript has been a real programming language for years, but for a
variety of reasons (the most obvious of which being the hobbled,
incompatible IE implementations ) it has rarely been used for anything
exotic. Gmail was the first app that caught the mainstream attention.
But at the same time the rich text editors like Writely (http://
http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/08/31...-your-browser/
now part of Google apps - but they still call it "Writely" inside
Google) were being written.