Learn ECMAScript Programming with Free Open-Source Books

Understanding ECMAScript 6

By Nicholas C. Zakas (321 pages)

This book is a guide for the transition between ECMAScript 5 and 6. It is not specific to any JavaScript environment, so it is equally useful to web developers as it is Node.js developers. This book is targeted at intermediate-to-advanced JavaScript developers programming for a browser or Node.js environment who want to learn about the latest developments in the language.

Each of this book’s thirteen chapters covers a different aspect of ECMAScript 6. Readers learn about:

• All of the changes to the language since ECMAScript 5
• How the new class syntax relates to more familiar JavaScript concepts
• Why iterators and generators are useful
• How arrow functions are differ from regular functions
• Additional options for storing data using sets, maps, and more
• The power of inheriting from native types
• Why people are so excited about promises for asynchronous programming
• How modules will change the way you organize code

The book is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.

You Don’t Know JS (book series)

By Kyle Simpson (278 pages)

This book teaches you how to:

• Learn new ES6 syntax that eases the pain points of common programming idioms
• Organize code with iterators, generators, modules, and classes
• Express async flow control with Promises combined with generators
• Use collections to work more efficiently with data in structured ways
• Leverage new API helpers, including Array, Object, Math, Number, and String
• Extend your program’s capabilities through meta programming
• Preview features likely coming to JS beyond ES6

ES6 & Beyond is part of a series of books examining the core mechanisms of JavaScript.

All books in the series are published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Standard ECMA-262 ECMAScript 2016 Language Specification

By Ecma International (586 pages)

This Standard defines the ECMAScript 2016 general purpose programming language.

The book is released under an open source license.