Education

Here is a biased review on a selection of more than 30 textbooks and tutorials I have gone through. In the order of most recent first.

Regardless of my rating I am aware of the great effort the authors have put into their work for which I am endlessly thankful. Every previous book that a student has read makes the success of the next book more certain.

Python Testing with pytest: Simple, Rapid, Effective, and Scalable

Author: Brian Okken

65%

Theory volume

80%

Theory presentation

65%

Practical exercises

Overall: good

The author is making such a light of it that he probably hides something.

The book does everything right: study on a concrete example (an actual app is the case study), look at what you can test, write your own tests, run them, interpret the results. However the case study app is too simplistic to make you battle ready.

Hypermedia Systems

Author: Carson Gross, Adam Stepinski, Deniz Akşimşek

75%

Theory volume

80%

Theory presentation

35%

Practical exercises

Overall: good

The undiscovered power.

It is hard to believe the scope of where htmx can be used and that it is environment agnostic. To grasp these impossible facts I needed to read a book. (I don’t remember the book having any exercises, but it has good code examples.)

JavaScript Cookbook: Programming the Web 3rd Edition

Author: Adam D. Scott, Matthew MacDonald, Shelley Powers

75%

Theory volume

70%

Theory presentation

Practical exercises

Overall: good if only some practice

Well written recipes.

A classical Cookbook where you don’t actually cook.

javascript.info

Author: Ilya Kantor

70%

Theory volume

70%

Theory presentation

65%

Practical exercises

Overall: ok

I am starting to think the problem lies not with the resources but with JavaScript.

While the rating numbers suggest wholesomeness, it still does not get you far. Perhaps it would have been better to practice on small projects (like a complete website). The resource offers tiny self contained tasks, sometimes a one line long code.

JavaScript from Beginner to Professional: Learn JavaScript quickly by building fun, interactive, and dynamic web apps, games, and pages

Author: Laurence Lars Svekis, Maaike Van Putten, Rob

55%

Theory volume

45%

Theory presentation

70%

Practical exercises

Overall: a book on JavaScript deserves better

How can you do so much and achieve so little.

The book has quite some exercises. But they are so detached from the reality. And I have never seen such poorly formulated tasks as in this book.

Comments

Do you have a different or the same opinion about a book? Or even better: you can recommend a learning material not listed here. Do not hesitate to share.