Re: Javascript for automation quastions
Re: Javascript for automation quastions
- Subject: Re: Javascript for automation quastions
- From: 2551 <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2014 23:36:28 +0700
> On 17 Dec 2014, at 23:15, has <email@hidden> wrote:
> > Pedagogically good computer books are a rare find. Bill and Sal's "AppleScript 1-2-3" is a rare example of one.
>
> Well, I've not read it myself beyond skimming the AS123 TOC and the online extract, though I suspect I might disagree. Highly engaging, yes; that was obvious just from the extract: Sal is a natural people person with a great gift for the gab. But I suspect most readers will come away with a head full of thrilling but garbled information that fails to gel into a coherent whole. The fact that you're struggling so much to transition from AS to JS, even though they're almost conceptual and mechanical twins, speaks to that.
You're assuming that's the only AS book I ever read. Nope. I read yours, too. And Matt's, and someone else's 'Absolute Beginner's' guide or something. If I'm having problems understanding anything, the blame is with the reader, not the authors.
But you're also assuming I'm struggling with moving from AS to JS. Not really. I've barely thrown 20 minutes into it in practice time, and probably about an hour over the last 6 months looking for a good book to get me over the initial hump. The only reason it's come up again for me right now is I just threw JXA-compatibiliyt into my AppleScript editor (so now, it's a Script Editor, just like the real thing!), and I wanted to play with error handling (my editor adds some error handling for AS that Script Editor leaves out and I wanted to see if I could do the same with the JS results).
But I'm time-hungry; if a book on some new tech I need to learn fast isn't going to get me started in the first ten minutes, then it's not the book for me. I'll throw that word out again, 'bootstrapping', as the key.
That doesn't mean I don't value books that cover principles later on. Matt's AS books is a great example, which I've read from cover to cover and am forever leafing through (in a Kindley way). Maybe Crockford's JS book is to JS what Matt's is to AS. But that's not what I need for 'bootstrapping'.
Incidentally, perhaps as an example of the power of JS itself, or however Amazon do it, they ended up sending me a recommendation for a JS book that from the sample chapter and the reviews looks like just what I need - a 'try it and play along' type book, not a 'listen to me while I preach the gospel' type. I've already spotted some typos in the sample chapter, so they'll have to be watched out for, but the content and methodology are what I'm looking for:
http://www.amazon.com/Modern-JavaScript-Develop-Larry-Ullman/dp/0321812522
Best
Phil
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