Book Review: Vue.js, This Much You Should Know

I picked this book up to read casually on the bus, but despite its slim thickness it had surprising depth. To begin with, this is not a book for beginners. The cover itself states (in small print) that it targets beginner to intermediate readers. It is a book for those who already know Vue.js to some degree and who are at least developing with it on real-world projects. Perhaps for that reason, it pulls no punches with its content. It skims through Vue.js at a rapid pace. Even so, it covers pretty much everything you need. In fact, it reminded even me—someone who has been developing with Vue.js for several months—of things I had glossed over. In that respect, Chapter 4: Template Syntax and Chapter 7: Advanced Features of Vue.js are excellent. It devotes a generous amount of space not only to theory but also to tutorials for building applications that actually run convincingly (!), and Chapter 9: Network Programming and Chapter 10: Building the NoteVuek Application are outstanding. Chapter 10 in particular covers a tutorial for building the backend with Firebase, and I was amazed to see the app spring to life so quickly with nothing more than the concise explanations in the comments accompanying the code.

That said, there are drawbacks that detract from the book’s strengths. First, there are a few places where the example code is attached in the wrong spot. There aren’t many errors, but it’s still disconcerting in a book that centers on example code. The copy I picked up was the first printing of the first edition, so I hope these get fixed quickly in the next printing. Second, the example code uploaded to github only goes up to Chapter 8. It’s surprising that there is no example code for Chapters 9 and 10, the most brilliant parts of this book. I hope this, too, is supplemented soon.