Five Free Copies of Upcoming O’Reilly Book ‘High Performance JavaScript’

Update (2010-02-25): This contest is now closed.

Book cover: High Performance JavaScript

Last year, Yahoo! engineer and all-around JavaScript badass Nicholas Zakas asked if I was interested in writing a chapter for a new book on JavaScript performance that he was working on. I agreed, and that book, High Performance JavaScript, is now available for preorder at Amazon and other fine book retailers.

In addition to the wide-ranging content by Nicholas and a chapter on string and regular expression performance by yours truly, chapters were also contributed by an awesome lineup of JavaScript performance gurus: Ross Harmes, Julien Lecomte, Stoyan Stefanov, and Matt Sweeney. This book is unique in its laser-focus on optimizing the performance of your JavaScript applications, and covers many advanced topics in the process. The chapter on strings and regular expressions provides what I think is easily the most in-depth coverage of cross-browser JavaScript regex performance currently available.

Here's the list of chapters:

  1. Loading and Execution
  2. Data Access
  3. DOM Scripting (Stoyan Stefanov)
  4. Algorithms and Flow Control
  5. Strings and Regular Expressions (Steven Levithan)
  6. Responsive Interfaces
  7. Ajax (Ross Harmes)
  8. Programming Practices
  9. Build and Deployment (Julien Lecomte)
  10. Tools (Matt Sweeney)

To celebrate the completion of this book, I'm giving away three copies. O'Reilly Media increased the offer to five books! All you need to do is comment on this post by February 24th, and I'll pick five people to send a copy to as soon as it's released (Amazon says March 15th). If you prefer, I'd be happy to send you a copy of Regular Expressions Cookbook instead (please note which book you want in your comment). Four winners will be chosen at random from the pool of unique commenters (I'll be tracking IPs), and the fifth based on the reason given for why you want a copy.

Make sure to include your email address in the comment form, since I'll need it to contact you if you're selected (your email address won't be used for any other purpose). Good luck, and congratulations to Nicholas Zakas and all the other authors on completing a fantastic new book!

Edit (2010-02-05): My blog has been offline more often than not for the first two days after posting this, and many people have reported that they were unable to post a comment. I apologize for the screw-up—my blog is now on a different server, and the problems should be resolved. Please try again!

Edit (2010-02-08): O'Reilly Media kindly offered to pick up the tab for this giveaway, and increased the winnings to five books!

Edit (2010-02-09): Nicholas Zakas posted more information about High Performance JavaScript on his blog: Announcing High Performance JavaScript.

Edit (2010-02-25): This contest is now closed. Winners will be announced here shortly.

Edit (2010-03-03): Following are the winners of this giveaway (the first four were chosen randomly):

  1. David Henderson
  2. Daniel Trebbien
  3. Lea Verou
  4. Stefan "schnalle" Schallerl
  5. Adam Crabtree

No. 5 Adam Crabtree, who wants to review the book and share it with members of the DallasJS Meetup Group, wins the nonrandom drawing for the best reason to win a copy. Runners up for this selection were Yoav, who promised to donate the book to a high school library after he's done with it; Nick Carter, who threatened me with his wrath if he doesn't win (I'll have to endure); Paul Irish, who kindly offered to have my last name corrected (to that of a sea monster) in exchange for winning; Alexei, a technical editor of a couple of Nicholas Zakas's previous books who'd like to know how many errors this one contains; and Marcel Korpel, who wants to improve his users' health by reducing the "headaches, general stress and insomnia" they suffer while waiting on his websites. 🙂

The winners have been informed by email about how to collect their prize. Thanks to everyone for playing!

283 thoughts on “Five Free Copies of Upcoming O’Reilly Book ‘High Performance JavaScript’”

  2. I really liked the ‘Regular Expressions Cookbook’ – I read it while taking a nice hot bath. I’m sorry that I had to blog about the fact that your IPv6 regexp failed to match some valid IPv6 addresses and was to lenient on other cases ( http://crisp.tweakblogs.net/blog/3049/ipv6-validation-more-caveats.html ). It also made me go off-guard with the difference between the meaning of /z and /Z (the example in the book used the latter where it should have been the former).

    Anyway, since I already read the regexp cookbook I’d be more interested in the ‘High Performance Javascript’ book. I really wonder wether it will give me some new insights I either forgot about or never bothered exploring 😛 At least it will give me an excuse to take another long hot bath…

  3. As a new JavaScript developer who seek to advance skill, I’m really interested in “High Performance JavaScript” book.

  9. As a web developer who’s been writing javascript for about 10 years now, I’ve been trying to delve into writing some quick scripts that provide significant functionality for the page, yet have a small footprint. Additionally, I am in a position to teach and train new developers at my job.

    I’ve explored the frameworks available, written my own, and keep fairly current with the patterns and techniques getting published. I would love to learn from your book, and would welcome some new perspectives on some ways to improve my code and application’s performance.

    Either way, congrats on the book! O’Reilly = no small feat. Kudos to you.

  13. Love all things O’Reilly Media, looking forward to reading this new one. Congrats on the published badassery.

  14. Sounds like a really interesting book. I’ve developed a pretty large website already in Javascript and will be interested to compare notes with you;)!

  15. I am fairly poor at both Regular Expressions and Javascript, so either would be a boon to my meager abilities.

  16. Nothing like some good JS work to help you through a sunday night crisis at work… 😉

  17. ‘cuz I want to better my odds of winning in a draw !

    for (;;)
    if (won) break;
    else Keep-trying;

    `High Performance JavaScript`

  29. So many days left and so many posts already! Wow…

    But even as i’m entering this contest without any particular hopes, i want to thank you for taking the time to share your knowledge with us.
    I’m making a mental note of these books in any case, because they are worth having, one day or another.

    Finding your website was a win already 🙂
    I’ll be keeping an eye on it even though you rarely write to it. But that’s cool, because it just means you rarely waste time 😉
    …every word is worth its weight in gold.

    Keep up the good work 🙂

    -{BB}

  30. Hey Steve, can’t wait to read Regular Expressions Cookbook *and* to give it to everybody I work with to make my days easier.

    If High Performance Javascript is available, I like to read that one too, not sure if it can satisfy my performance hunger (ref MooTools/Sly) 😉

    Cya in IM.

  31. congrats on the authorship.

    Im currently taking a programming languages class, and we don’t go into any detail on any of the languages. And I link a good book on JavaScript would certainly do me some good.

  32. Besides convincing arguments about programming, performance has a strong impact on usability too. The more an interface is responsive, the better for your users and your business. Thus, thumbs up for this book — and finger crossed for the free copy. 🙂

  33. Pingback: Announcing High Performance JavaScript | NCZOnline

  41. Just ran into Nicholas’ post announcing the book today – it sounds great! JS apps can never be responsive enough, especially considering the performance of certain (*khm*IE*khm*) browsers around and the fact that the language is slowly spreading to the server side as well. I’m looking forward to reading the book!

  42. I’m so into javascript the language itself. Really like to know more about it. Thanks for the great book.

  44. First, I just need the book to do my job better.
    Second, being a tech editor of two other Nicholas’s books I am just curious how many errors this one may contain :).

  46. I’m really excited about this book (High Performance JavaScript) as I’m delving deeper and deeper in this language. I think “I’ve fallen in love” 😀

    I hope I can sometime give back as much to the community as I’ve learnt from it 🙂

    If not winning, I’ll have to buy a copy, this book seems to be a “must have”.

  47. This book is going to be amazing! Just from the list of authors I can tell it will be high quality material and a definite must-read for anyone serious about JavaScript. Thanks for sharing your knowledge! I can’t wait to read it!

  50. Thank you for your regex-heavy blog, which often helped me find my way around string parsing challenges.

    …and should I win the book, your hosting costs would surely plummet, because I wouldn’t check the site so often anymore 😉

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