Join our JavaScript book club

Are you learning JavaScript in 2020? Or are you a JavaScript developer who wants to level up his or her skills?

Edit: the book club reached 1,000 members in a day (and growing) and in addition to the club, we're now hosting community events that are free and open to developers of all experience levels. Join the discord below or follow our Twitter account to attend an event.

Starting January 19th, I’m hosting an online JavaScript book club that is free and open for all to attend. We will be reading the free You Don’t Know JS series. We'll be kicking off the club with reading the first book in the series: Get Started. We will always meet online (on Zoom) so you can join from anywhere in the world.

So... why should you join?

Whether you're already working as a JavaScript developer or more of a beginner to JS, you're probably working on leveling up your understanding of JS. Instead of doing this alone, we'll meet weekly and learn together as we read You Don't Know JS--a free book series that is considered one of the best resources on JS.

Here are the next steps if you're interested in joining the club:

1. Join our email list to get your invitation to the club by email, and to get updates on future books or community events. (https://twitter.com/Madisonkanna) and I'll send you the link again.
2. Vote for what time you'd like the club to meet at. The club will meet on Sundays but the time chosen will be based on attendees availability. Once you join the discord, you'll find the pinned poll to vote on a time.
3. Introduce yourself in the discord, and start reading chapter 1.
4. Remember that you don't need to attend every meeting! Just make it when you can.

If you're still thinking of joining but would like more details, here's some more info on the book club.

When you think of a book club, you usually think of people meeting to discuss a book. Instead of only having discussions, our book club will have themes to each week so we can actively learn together. We'll alternate between discussion week and teach week.

For discussion week, we’ll break up into small groups and each person will share either one thing they learned and a comment or question they have on it, or one thing they struggled with in the chapter. This will give us the opportunity to learn from each other and share our takeaways or struggles with the chapter. For discussion weeks, you'll just need to read the chapter and come up with a comment or question before the meeting.

For teach week, you read the current chapter and then explain just 1 thing you learned from that chapter with a small demo. On the call, we’ll break up into small groups of 5 and present our demos to each other. Each demo can be presented in 4-6 minutes with a minute or two for questions or more comments. This will allow us to practice our coding by creating a demo of what we learned, and cement our learning as we teach it to others.

You might be thinking... OMG! A demo? No way! That's scary and might be a lot of work.

Okay, hold on. The point of the book club is to have a free, friendly and low-pressure place to learn JS with others. We also want to make the book club as valuable to you as possible. And a great way to learn is to teach others what you learned. This will cement your understanding of what you learned.

Our teach week meetings will never be about pouring hours into creating a fancy demo, or about doing scary presentations. Our teach week meeting will be about taking just 1 thing you learned from the current chapter and briefly explaining it in a few sentences or a few lines of code. Or even just one sentence, or one line of code! Did you learn how to createn a object? Share it in a sentence! Did you learn the difference between const and let? Share it!

By taking turns sharing what we learn, we'll gain a better understanding of what we're learning. For our teach week call, you can come to the call with a small demo (such as a line or two of code on Repl.it) and explain what that code means to others. Or if you'd like, simply grab a bit of code or a concept straight from the chapter and explain it to. For teach week, you'll read the current chapter and then pick a concept or idea from the chapter that you'll (briefly!) explain to your fellow book club attendees.

If there’s one thing I learned in the last three years as I went from beginner to working as a JavaScript developer, it is that having a better understanding of the foundations of JS is helpful—no matter what experience level you’re at. It's one thing to read a book and talk about it. It’s another to present a small demo and teach what you learned. You’ll get feedback on what you learned from others, and you'll grow your skills as a communicator as you talk about code to others.

By doing this on our calls, we'll grow as JavaScript developers—-together. :) Our meetings will happen every Sunday, and never go over 1 hour. We’ll meet live on Zoom, where we can talk to each other via video and break up into smaller groups from there. This club will be a place to learn with each other and ask the "stupid" questions--even though there is no such thing. :)

There is no obligation to attend the book club every week. If you can’t make it one week, simply catch up on reading and join us the next week. I've also added a doc with more details on the club.

I look forward to seeing you in the club!