Exploring JS: JavaScript books for programmers

Most of the following books are free to read online. I hope you’ll like them so much that you’ll buy the offline versions.

— Dr. Axel Rauschmayer (author of the 2ality blog)

The books

“ES” stands for “ECMAScript” (ES6 is ECMAScript 6, etc.).

JavaScript for impatient programmers (ES1–ES2018) New
- A modern guide to the language.
- More compact than my other books, which go into greater depth.
Speaking JavaScript (ES1–ES5)
- JavaScript for programmers
- No required knowledge (apart from programming)
Exploring ES6
Exploring ES2016 and ES2017
Exploring ES2018 and ES2019 New

Setting up ES6
- Using and configuring Babel 6 in web browsers and on Node.js.
Exploring ReasonML and functional programming. ReasonML is probably the FP language that is easiest to learn for JavaScript programmers (and therefore a good way to get started with FP):
- It’s a pragmatic language (based on OCaml), with various “impure” escape hatches (output, mutable state, etc.).
- Its syntax is based on JavaScript’s.
- One of its main goals is good JavaScript interoperability.

Dr. Axel Rauschmayer specializes in JavaScript and web development. He blogs, writes books and teaches classes.

Axel has been writing about the future of JavaScript since early 2011.