>Recommending Javascript the Good Parts to Javascript beginners is like recommending Effective Java to Java beginners.
Or, like recommending K&R C to beginners (C beginners, but even worse to programming beginners). There are a handful of books out there that, IMHO, are vastly mis-recommended, and I would agree that JS:The Good Parts is one of them.
I found K&R C to be refreshingly easy to follow, but that isn't saying much because prior to that I had learned C++ from Stroustrup's book (which I had to read three times cover-to-cover before I finally understood what in the world he was talking about). Any book would seem easy to follow after that pan-galactic gargle blaster.
And now I'm sure someone will respond saying that they found Stroustrup's book remarkably straightforward. To each his own I suppose.
I don't think I can endorse this, necessarily. I learned C from "C by Dissection" back when the cover was purple. I then learned C++ from a combination of Bjarne's book and "C++ in 24 hours". Before that I only knew qbasic and vb, so it was a fairly big transition and I was young and had no experience, so it was difficult to get to a point of understanding (I did this in HS when no CS courses were offered at my grade level, so it was heavily self-guided).
I recently read K&R for the first time and found it thoroughly enjoyable and understandable going into it with the mindset of a first-time reader. I thought "I wonder what it would've been like to read this instead of how I did it, since everyone recommends it." I think I'd recommend it to others, even people new to programming.
What's bad about really terse or difficult to follow books is that they densely pack information or lack explanation and that really inhibits learning. I find that K&R raises a lot of questions without leaving the reader unsatisfied or confused, which I think is the exact opposite -- if you're really interested, you'll use that as motivation to go learn more. You might not immediately see why language features are very valuable, but I think that improves for everyone as you learn more.
I learned from K&R too, and seriously, no book ever told me how closely arrays and pointers were related (atleast, whatever books I read), as TCPL.
I don't find anything wrong with recommending it to 'programmers' who begin C.
Or, like recommending K&R C to beginners (C beginners, but even worse to programming beginners). There are a handful of books out there that, IMHO, are vastly mis-recommended, and I would agree that JS:The Good Parts is one of them.