I went on my honeymoon recently and decided to pick up some reading for the plane ride*. The book JavaScript Patterns** piqued my interest after seeing it on this list of useful JavaScript books, so I decided to check it out.

The book’s aim is to provide useful techniques and abstractions (coding patterns), best practices, and approaches for implementing popular design patterns for the mid-level to advanced JavaScript developer. However, its main focus is on coding patterns. After introducing JavaScript and going over some basic concepts, the author launches into a chapter on best practices, which covers a grab bag of topics, everything from naming conventions to loop optimization to writing API docs. This chapter was actually where I first learned of YUIDoc and JSDoc, two great tools for generating API documentation for JavaScript code.

After that follow the chapters on coding patterns. The author goes over various subjects and explains techniques that will make you a better developer. Techniques like enforcing new when you define constructor function, the module pattern, self-defining functions, etc. Some of it you may already know, but it’s a good collection coding patterns.

The book finishes up with a chapter on implementing common design patterns in JavaScript (it covers: Singleton, Factory, Iterator, Decorator, Strategy, Facade, Proxy, Mediator, and Observer) and a chapter on working with the DOM. If your main interest is in learning design patterns, I’d probably recommend Pro JavaScript Design Patterns instead, since it’s main focus is design patterns and it devotes more time to explaining them and giving examples, however, if you’re already somewhat familiar with them and you have a decent understanding of how OOP works in JavaScript, than I would pick this book up instead as it cover more ground and is faster paced.

Overall I really enjoyed this book and learned a lot of useful tid bits from it. I’d recommend picking it up if you’re looking write better JavaScript code and to fine tune the techniques you know about JavaScript.

* The other books I read were Fahrenheit 451 (it was ok) and The Martian Chronicles (excellent book).
** Non-referral link, just so you all don’t think I’m trying to sell you books.