Review: If Hemingway Wrote Javascript

If Hemingway Wrote JavaScript by Angus Croll

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The intro mentions the natural language nature of Javascript. I wonder if the book had been concieved a few years later if it would rather have been Python or Ruby - both of which are way more like human language than Javascript.

The book is fun and I mostly get it, but to truly get what the author is doing here, I think you would need to be a Javascript dev. The whole point is that the author is nerding out not only on the writing style of the authors they have chosen, but also converting that into Javascript coding styles. As someone who programmed in many languages, but hasn’t touched Javasscript in the the mid-90s, a lot of the elegance of this book is lost on me.

That said, it’s a fun read. I think because of the self-contained nature of the chapters and sections - chapters are focused on a specific classic programming problem (fibonacci sequence, factorials) and sections on authors - this would me a good coffee table book or bathroom book. Something you can read in bits and pieces whenever the urge would strike you. Otherwise, I imagine it could be finished in a session of an hour or two, depending on how much time you spent with the code examples.

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