Learn programming through JavaScript

I found a link to Eloquent JavaScript on some website shortly before posting the last blog entry about PCall, and just realized that it's written by the same Marijn Haverbeke. Interesting coincidence.

From a quick skimming, the book itself appears aimed at those new to programming. I like the style and the exercises used, and the coverage of JavaScript appears good without reading like a spec. The books also covers everything you need to know to get started building web applications. If someone wanted to learn programming by jumping straight into the web (a somewhat prudent thing to do in this day and age) I would recommend this book alongside SICP, it's certainly a lot better than most of the other JavaScript learning resources I've encountered.

In other Marijn Haverbeke-related JavaScript news, he also has Lisp implementations of a JavaScript parser and a JSON library. The former provides another way besides jwacs to get JavaScript code into Lisp, while the latter provides an alternative to CL-JSON.