Introduction :: Eloquent JavaScript

A program is a building of thought. It is costless to build, it is weightless, and it grows easily under our typing hands. But as a program grows, so does its complexity. The skill of programming is the skill of building programs that don’t confuse yourself. The best programs are those that manage to do something interesting while still being easy ... See more

Programming is the act of constructing a program —a set of precise instructions telling a computer what to do. Because computers are dumb, pedantic beasts, programming is fundamentally tedious and frustrating.

A programming language is an artificially constructed language used to instruct computers. It is interesting that the most effective way we’ve found to communicate with a computer borrows so heavily from the way we communicate with each other. Like human languages, computer languages allow words and phrases to be combined in new ways, making it pos... See more