Official recommended reading
The CUHK CSE course description, effective 1 July 2024, lists these recommended resources.
| Resource | How to use it |
|---|---|
| W3Schools tutorials | Try a small syntax example, change one part, and explain why its result changes. |
| Chris Northwood, The Full Stack Developer: Your Essential Guide to the Everyday Skills Expected of a Modern Full Stack Web Developer (2018) | Relate a browser feature to the server and development work needed to support it. |
| Russ Ferguson, Beginning JavaScript: The Ultimate Guide to Modern JavaScript Development (2019) | Study language fundamentals alongside small programs whose state you can trace. |
Books and tutorials may describe earlier tool versions. Match a feature or API to its current technical documentation when trying an example.
Web standards and technical documentation
- WHATWG HTML Living Standard: the specification for HTML elements, document rules and browser behavior. Use it to settle a precise question about valid markup or an element's meaning.
- MDN: HTML: element descriptions, examples and links to the relevant standard sections.
- MDN: How the web works: an overview of clients, servers and resource loading.
- MDN: URI reference: the parts of an address and how they are interpreted.
- W3C web standards: standards across web technologies, including accessibility.
- Bootstrap 5.3 grid: breakpoint and column conventions used in the layout examples.
- MDN JavaScript Guide and Using Fetch: language behavior and asynchronous request handling.
- React documentation: components, state, event handling and rendering; consult the API reference when comparing older class-based examples.
Read with a concrete question
Choose one question before opening a long reference: which element expresses this relationship, how does this URL resolve, or which program changes this state? Write down your prediction, reduce the example to the relevant lines, then compare its behavior with the documented rule. A short example you can explain is more useful than a large example whose output you only recognize.