[semperfaux]

"You don't know x."

"10 things you didn't know about y."

"Everything you thought you knew about z is wrong."

Am I the only one that finds titles like this completely offputting? If you think you have insight that's useful to people, try not talking down to them. As it is, hell, I may not know Javascript, but I'm certainly not clicking through.

[_getify]

I explain the title, and the intended tone and purpose of the book series, in the preface. If you wouldn't mind taking the 3 minutes to read it, I'd be curious if it changes anything about your opinion of the title:

https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS/blob/master/prefa...

[ekidd]

Nope, it still doesn't work for me, personally. I never played "You Don't Know Jack", and so I tend to interpret your title literally. And your title implies that no matter how much somebody knows about JavaScript, it's not enough.

Two decades ago, I was really into learning all the disgusting corners of badly-designed programming languages. I got really excited about C++ implicit conversions and clever template hacks. But that always proved to be a mistake, because nobody wants to read or maintain any of that crap.

These days, I try to focus on the essentials of a language: What works well and portably? What offers unique expressive capabilities that I haven't seen before? What's idiomatic? If I learn any nasty corner-cases, I only do it solve a specific problem, or to avoid pitfalls.

I really can't get excited about the implicit conversion semantics of JavaScript's "==" operator or the weirder points of how "this" get bound in callbacks. It's all just pointless technical arcana. If something neither expands my brain nor solves an immediate commercial problem, I'm happy ignoring it until it becomes obsolete. And my clients are usually a lot happier, too.

(That said, the actual books are nicely written. But you asked about the titles.)

[sosuke]

Having played the "You Don't Know Jack" PC game from 1995 I found the title playful. From your preface I see you'll be doing exactly what I wanted from a book with this title. Going into all the areas I never would in a programming language. Not just how but why.

I agree with the GP though, on feeling some fatigue around people telling me I'm doing something wrong. Eating food, reading a book, tying my shoes, putting on a shirt. Anyhow it seems like you've just touched on that area a bit for this person. Experts don't like for Dummies books, not because they are rubbish, which they might be, but because owning or reading them visibly puts into question their knowledge and challenges their self image. In the same way someone might find your title a challenge to their knowledge, instead of seeing that you're interested in highlighting often overlooked things about JS.

For the love of God please don't put a giant headed person on your cover though. I've come to terms with every other book series having a positive quality with the exception of "Head First" and their distorted human cover photos. /rant

We all have our ticks when it comes to books and advertising around things we love.

[alanning]

I'd suggest, "The Tough Parts", as you mention in the preface.

Not sure who your target market is but as a professional developer who writes javascript daily, "The Tough Parts", piques my curiosity and sounds like an interesting challenge. "You Don't Know JS" evokes a more negative reaction.

[semperfaux]

Sorry, but I think it should be clear from my comment that your title is indeed putting people off of reading your work at all. I don't doubt that it's worth reading, but I think you should consider that the title itself, accuracy aside, is dissuading more people than just me from reading your work.

The point isn't the quality of your work. It's your hook that's failing at least some of us to the point that you are potentially missing out on part of your target audience by default.

[AndrewDucker]

Yup. The original talks were called "Advanced JS: The 'What You Need To Know' Parts" - and I'd much rather have a book with _that_ title on my desk, rather than one that makes it look like I'm reading a "...For Dummies" book.

[imdsm]

Just putting it out there but knocking the "For Dummies" books based on the title is a bit pretentious. Sure, the title doesn't really make you look good but the books are often well written and informative. They have a great layout and serve well as introductory books.

In fact, I'd go as far as to say a lot of other books could learn a lot from the layout of the series. I've read many books and the dry books don't hold my attention for long. There is something to be said for books you just absorb.

[CmonDev]

Maybe it's a play on how horrible the language is?

E.g. "You don't know what callback hell means. You don't know the horror of refactoring a weakly typed dynamic language. You are truly blessed for you don't know JS."

[M4v3R]

If the post was titled "In-depth look at Javascript" or something, I might've skip it. This title piqued my interest because I write Javascript for living for a long time and I was genuinely wondering what I don't know yet about the language.

[gondo]

and did you learn anything new? just wondering

[Silhouette]

Am I the only one that finds titles like this completely offputting?

No, you aren't, though FWIW I try to force myself to at least look at what's been submitted before commenting, in the spirit of not judging books by covers and all that.

In this case, I found very little to suggest that I do not, in fact, know JavaScript.

I'm also assuming that this is a very early draft of the material, but it could certainly benefit from the input of a good editor before any final publication.

[_getify]

> I found very little to suggest

Just curious what parts you looked at? Did you glance at the table of contents, or did you read full chapters? I certainly tried to reveal in every chapter several different things that, in my professional experience teaching JS to teams of developers, are commonly misunderstood or under-understood.

If you had any specific feedback on what I could have done better to live up to the title, tone, and mission of the book series, I'd be appreciative of it.

> very early draft

Depends on which book(s) you looked at. The series is 18 months old by now, with 6 titles. 5 of them are already "complete".

3 of them have already been edited and published (though publisher edits didn't necessarily all make it back into the free repo versions).

2 of them are in final editing and production stages, so they're still being cleaned up. The sixth one is still a very early and partial draft, so it's quite rough.

[brudgers]

It's easy to be a critic. On the internet it's even possible to be a popular critic on a topic by admitting that one hasn't even read the subject of the criticism. In the world of male tech, one can easily achieve top common in an HN thread exactly for judging a book by its cover.

Anyone who doesn't have imposter syndrome hasn't tried the exercises in TAoCP.

[ebbv]

> It's easy to be a critic.

In fact it's so easy that you can make a snide comment criticizing someone else's criticism and it will do really well if you throw in some unnecessary and ridiculous "male dominated" comment.

[collypops]

It wouldn't be a Hacker News thread without the top comment being an "Am I the only one...?"

[aphexairlines]

It's probably a play on the "you don't know jack" trivia game.

[tim_iles]

More likely the common phrase, "you don't know jack shit".

[5outh]

I thought it was an homage to You Don't Know Jack (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Don%27t_Know_Jack_%28video_...). I read the title as "You Don't Know Jack Squat," haha. I don't know if that was the author's intent, though.

[_getify]

Yes, that was my intended (subtle) joke.

[imdsm]

That takes me back! Never thought I'd see that again...

[ergothus]

Actually, I'm fine with these titles. It's the "Dummies", "Idiot's", etc titles that I find offensive.

My problem is (usually) ignorance, and I'm looking to correct that. If I'm an idiot, no book will fix that.

[ramblerman]

I think it says more about your ego imo. I mean you're getting worked up about a book's title to the point that you won't look at its content. Just because it insinuated you don't know said content.

It's amusing if anything.

[drapper]

""You don't know x." titles considered harmful."