Book Review: JavaScript Web Applications by Alex MacCaw

I began developing in JavaScript just over a year ago. The company I’m working for had announced a brand new product that was to be web-based, and with not a single web developer on our team, I took the initiative to completely immerse myself in web application architecture. I started, like many others, with JavaScript: The Good Parts. After devouring that, it was time to understand how large-scale JavaScript applications might be constructed. It was around that time that I discovered JavaScript Web Applications by Alex MacCaw.

The book begins with a primer on the MVC pattern and how it applies to JavaScript, and takes the reader through a pretty easy read on other important topics like events, models, state, client-side templating, dependency management, and other very relevant topics.

What I like most about this book is the author’s willingness to include examples from a variety of frameworks and libraries. The author covers Spine, Backbone, and JavaScriptMVC applications frameworks, as well as Yabble and RequireJS loaders. It’s nice to see an author including these examples, as they highlight the differences between frameworks, and help budding JavaScript developers learn new ways of solving problems. The book does use jQuery all over the place, which was nice as it’s our framework of choice where I work.

What amazes me most about this book is the amount of information the author managed to pack in to just over 220 pages. He covers the basics on just about every area of web application development you might need to know, including primers on jQuery, CSS3, and LESS. The content is broken out beautifully in concise, easy-to-read, easy-to-understand chapters. The Testing and Debugging chapter is the only one to exceed 25 pages, which makes it easy to read a chapter over lunch.

Even now, a year later, it’s not easy to find other books that cover as many JavaScript and web application topics as this book. It’s a great introduction to everything you’ll need to know about large-scale web application development.