Definitely a great book. Telling someone to just "build something" seems a bit much. Exploratory learning is good and all, but newbies need structure before they can try walking.
I'm currently learning Python and I can't agree more. There's a lot of macho-IRC-dweller attitude on the internet when it comes to learning a new language. People take the "If you teach a man to fish" argument to the extreme and end up confusing/discouraging people in search of some guide, some map to show them the way. No, documentation doesn't count when you can't read a lick of code.
That said, I'm currently reading Learning Python the Hard Way, which pushes you through a lot of information, step-by-step but not patronizing, and teaches you not only code, but how to be organized and on top of your code.
Eloquent JavaScript is comparable in that it's a book that has plenty of explanatory code snippets, but plenty of code exercises as well, and isn't a cookbook for web programming, but rather teaches the language for what it is. No jQuery/CoffeeScript stuff here, just straight-up JS as a language.
