JavaScript Allongé

A strong cup of functions, objects, combinators, and decorators

"This is a must-read for any developer who wants to know Javascript better... Reg has a way of explaining things in a way that connected the dots for me. This is probably the only programming book I've re-read cover to cover a dozen times or more."—etrinh

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JavaScript Allongé

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About the Book

What readers are saying

“I think it’s one of the best tech books I’ve read since Sedgewick’s Algorithms in C.” Andrey Sidorov

“Your explanation of closures in JavaScript Allongé is the best I've read.” Emehrkay

“It's a different approach to JavaScript than you'll find in most other places and shines a light on some of the more elegant parts of JavaScript the language.” @jeremymorrell

And listen to the JavaScript Jabber Book Club Podcast about JavaScript Allongé!

Why they're saying it:

JavaScript Allongé solves two important problems for the ambitious JavaScript programmer. First, JavaScript Allongé gives you the tools to deal with JavaScript bugs, hitches, edge cases, and other potential pitfalls.

There are plenty of good directions for how to write JavaScript programs. If you follow them without alteration or deviation, you will be satisfied. Unfortunately, software is a complex thing, full of interactions and side-effects. Two perfectly reasonable pieces of advice when taken separately may conflict with each other when taken together. An approach may seem sound at the outset of a project, but need to be revised when new requirements are discovered.

When you “leave the path” of the directions, you discover their limitations. In order to solve the problems that occur at the edges, in order to adapt and deal with changes, in order to refactor and rewrite as needed, you need to understand the underlying principles of the JavaScript programming language in detail.

“This book is awesome and blowing my mind in a great way.” Johnathan Mukai

You need to understand why the directions work so that you can understand how to modify them to work properly at or beyond their original limitations. That’s where JavaScript Allongé comes in.

JavaScript Allongé is a book about programming with functions, because JavaScript is a programming language built on flexible and powerful functions. JavaScript Allongé begins at the beginning, with values and expressions, and builds from there to discuss types, identity, functions, closures, scopes, and many more subjects up to working with classes and instances. In each case, JavaScript Allongé takes care to explain exactly how things work so that when you encounter a problem, you’ll know exactly what is happening and how to fix it.

“Enjoying Javascript Allonge... I think it's the best discussion of functional programming in js I've found so far.” Nicholas Faiz

Second, JavaScript Allongé provides recipes for using functions to write software that is simpler, cleaner, and less complicated than alternative approaches that are object-centric or code-centric. JavaScript idioms like function combinators and decorators leverage JavaScript’s power to make code easier to read, modify, debug and refactor, thus avoiding problems before they happen.

JavaScript Allongé teaches you how to handle complex code, and it also teaches you how to simplify code without dumbing it down. As a result, JavaScript Allongé is a rich read releasing many of JavaScript’s subtleties, much like the Café Allongé beloved by coffee enthusiasts everywhere.

“Reading JavaScript Allongé by @raganwald. This book is so good that it's blowing my mind.” Guillermo Pascual

You can read the book online, download the free sample pdf or better still, buy the ebook today. There's a no-questions-asked 100% money-back guarantee, so you can read it worry-free.

And Coming Soon: JavaScript Spessore

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About the Author

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Table of Contents

  • A Pull of the Lever: Prefaces
    • Foreword by Michael Fogus
    • Foreword by Matthew Knox
    • Why JavaScript Allongé?
    • A Personal Word About The Recipes
    • Legend
  • Prelude: Values and Expressions
    • values and expressions
    • values and identity
  • 1 The first sip: Basic Functions
    • As Little As Possible About Functions, But No Less
    • Ah. I’d Like to Have an Argument, Please.
    • Closures and Scope
    • Let’s Talk Var
    • Naming Functions
    • Combinators and Function Decorators
    • Building Blocks
    • I’d Like to Have Some Arguments. Again.
    • Summary
  • 2 The Recipe Cheat Sheet
  • 3 Recipes with Basic Functions
    • Partial Application
    • Ellipses and improved Partial Application
    • Unary
    • Tap
    • Maybe
  • 4 The Pause That Refreshes: Rebinding and References
    • Arguments and Arrays
    • References and Objects
    • Reassignment and Mutation
    • How to Shoot Yourself in the Foot With Var
    • When Rebinding Meets Recursion
    • From Let to Modules
    • Summary
  • 5 Recipes with Rebinding and References
    • Once
    • mapWith
    • Flip
    • Extend
    • Why?
  • 6 Stir the Allongé: Objects, Mutation, and State
    • Encapsulating State with Closures
    • Composition and Extension
    • This and That
    • What Context Applies When We Call a Function?
    • Method Decorators
    • Summary
  • 7 Recipes with Objects, Mutations, and State
    • Memoize
    • getWith
    • pluckWith
    • Deep Mapping
  • 8 Finish the Cup: Instances and Classes
    • Prototypes are Simple, it’s the Explanations that are Hard To Understand
    • Binding Functions to Contexts
    • Partial Application, Binding, and Currying
    • A Class By Any Other Name
    • Object Methods
    • Extending Classes with Inheritance
    • Summary
  • 9 Recipes with Instances and Classes
    • Currying
    • Bound
    • Unbinding
    • Send
    • Invoke
    • Fluent
    • Once Again
  • 10 Sequence
    • Introduction: Compose and Pipeline
  • 11 New Ideas
    • How Prototypes and Constructors differ from Classes
    • New-Agnostic Constructors
    • Another New-Agnostic Constructor Pattern
    • Mixins
    • Class Decorators
    • Interlude: Tortoises, Hares, and Teleporting Turtles
    • Functional Iterators
    • Refactoring to Functional Iterators
    • A Drunken Walk Across A Chequerboard
    • Trampolining
  • 12 Recipes for New Ideas
    • Before
    • After
    • Provided and Except
    • A Functional Mixin Factory
    • A Class Decorator Factory
    • Iterator Recipes
  • The Golden Crema
    • Author’s Notes
    • How to run the examples
    • Thanks!
    • CoffeeScript Ristretto
    • Copyright Notice
    • About The Author

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