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’”

  1. I’m definitely going to get this book – even if I don’t win the giveaway!

    If it can improve my javascript half as much as the regex cookbook improved my understanding of regular expressions, it will be an absolutely invaluable book!

  3. Can’t wait for a copy of the book – the authors are all best of breed when it comes to Javascript performance checking

  6. My coworkers and I will most likely purchase this if I don’t get lucky here. Coming from a c++ background originally, I have a strong desire to not rely on compilers, interpreters, engines, processors, etc. for speed increases. However, javascript (like most interpreted languages) to me is still black magic.
    Thanks for contributing!

  10. I would love to get the Regular Expressions Book. Will probably still grab the Javascript book also, but I would LOVE to win your Regular Expression Book. ps: I can’t find the code examples anywhere online so far, but will keep looking. Thank you for your book!

  12. Cool! I have been waiting High Performance JavaScript for a long time. I always wondering how can I improve my JavaScript codes. Performance issue is what I’m studying recently. Hope this book can give me a new vision on JavaScript.

  14. Hi, I would really appreciate the High Performance JavaScript to be able to help myself and my colleagues to write a better javascript code.

  15. wow! It would be really really cool to have a copy of High Performance JavaScript.

    Thanks a lot for your work.

  17. WOW, WHAT GOOD IDEA! It is all that I need to finish mi website. JavaScript is my favorite dish in Ajax menu. THANKS A LOT!!! And, thanks to N.Zakas, S.Souders, and S.Levithan for your great contribution to JS development (and to JS developers, of course)!
    😉

  19. I tried out a few ISO8601 javascript parsing scripts and had ran into issues – yours is working great so far!

    Thanks. 🙂

  21. cool, i want a copy :), i already have your book about Regular Expressions so i’d like to have High Performance JavaScript.

    thanks for book.

  22. After writing a fair amount of code in Basic & Pascal, I was introduced to C and the cool/horrible things you could do with pointers. I took to it like a fish to water. At the time I was becoming interested in computer graphics, so performance was a focus and I became an expert of wringing that last few instructions out of inner loops.

    Time passed, and while I’ve added C++ and Perl to my toolset, the first is more for building bigger things easier, and the second has unfortunately fallen out of favor in the general community. You can still do great things, but there’s just not that many new people getting seriously into Perl.

    Ruby never bit me, and other languages like Lua and Ocaml were just too obscure, but finally I started playing around with javascript and I’ve come to realize it has the makings of greatness. I’ve built some pretty cool things in it already, just sort of feeling my way around in the dark, and now is the time for me to get some power information on making javascript jam. Of course, work’s not going to be buying me any technical books in these dismal times, but should I win a copy of HPJ I expect it will be well read/used/worn by our team in short order.

  27. I think this book will helpful for writing efficient & optimized JS. There are many article I found in different blog etc on efficient JS, but it will be very helpful if i get all & more content in one book.So count me, hope it will be awesome 🙂

  28. I would be very pleased to have a copy of your Regular Expressions Cookbook as I have been trying to teach myself using online tutorials. And although some are quite good they are not very portable. Thank you for your consideration and best of luck with the new book. (And may we all find good jobs in 2010!)
    Stephen A. Hoenig

  29. Looking forward to reading this one. My carrier has been focused on rich clients and web services. It is resources like this book that help keep my skills fresh.

  30. I would love to have a copy of High Performance JavaScript because I am always looking to improve the speed of Javascript code, but do not have very much time or appropriate tools to experiment methodically with different techniques.

    It seems more and more that projects I am working on involve a lot of Javascript that adds a whole bunch of dynamism to the websites that I am helping to develop. Things like AJAX, DOM manipulation, data manipulation, regular expressions, callbacks, and algorithms are all commonplace, yet I often wonder whether the way that I have written things is particularly efficient. The Javascripts can be massive, so any speed improvements can lead to a marked improvement in user experience, but I do not know what to look for when trying to optimize, so it is kind of like stumbling through the dark.

    This book, especially because of chapters 1 through 7, seems like the professional front-end developer’s essential guide to the unknown world of Javascript optimization. We finally have something authoritative to read!

  34. I was looking for Javascript book which was more than just the language itself. a Book which focuses on application, performance, best practice, deployment and tools.

    I would love to have this book “High Performance JavaScript”

  36. Yup, I’d be well up for a copy of this, its my bread and butter, and the js app I’m working on has much inherited code that could really do with a significant speed up!

  39. I googled your article about matching inner-most pairs (https://blog.stevenlevithan.com/archives/match-innermost-html-element) which was very helpful!

    I’m not new to RegEx, but i’m way out of practice, so I very quickly found myself reading several of your blog posts… I’ll be coming back time and time againg — Thanks!

    I’d love a copy of one the new JavaScript Performance books it sounds like it’ll be a great read with lots to learn!

  41. In my opinion JS is not a simple language — so better more thorough reference material can never hurt. I am by no means an expert with JS. 😀

    cheers
    -David

  45. I’ve recently had to give up vodka =(, smirnoff was my flavour. I think only a copy of ‘Regular Expressions Cookbook’ can fill the void.

  47. I’d love to win a copy of high performance javascript because I’ve spent all of my pocket money and can’t afford not to own it.

  48. I’m working from Barcelona and desperately need this book to keep the Sagrada Familia from falling down (it has some bad memory and global variable issues).

  49. Congratulations to your guys. That’s an exciting book telling by the name. Programmers are always sensitive to performance.

    I didn’t expect winner of this contest is randomly picked. I thought there would be some js test. 250 competitors so far, that’s a keen competition.

    A guy said he would donate it to a high school library, that’s great. In our library I can hardly find any latest English books I wanna read. A donation would tell them how dumb they are.

    If I’m one of the lucky one, I would like‘High Performance JavaScript’,thank you.

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