JavaScript: The Good Parts | Douglas Crockford | Lends expertise to the topic

JavaScript: The Good Parts | Douglas Crockford | Excellent way to become fluent in Javascript.

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JavaScript: The Go...

	JavaScript: The Good Parts Douglas Crockford O'Reilly Media, Inc., 2008 - 170 pages average customer review:based on 24 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Most programming languages contain good and bad parts, but JavaScript has more than its share of the bad, having been developed and released in a hurry before it could be refined. This authoritative book scrapes away these bad features to reveal a subset of JavaScript that's more reliable, readable, and maintainable than the language as a whole-a subset you can use to create truly extensible and efficient code. Considered the JavaScript expert by many people in the development community, author Douglas Crockford identifies the abundance of good ideas that make JavaScript an outstanding object-oriented programming language-ideas such as functions, loose typing, dynamic objects, and an expressive object literal notation. Unfortunately, these good ideas are mixed in with bad and downright awful ideas, like a programming model based on global variables. When Java applets failed, JavaScript became the language of the Web by default, making its popularity almost completely independent of its qualities as a programming language. In JavaScript: The Good Parts, Crockford finally digs through the steaming pile of good intentions and blunders to give you a detailed look at all the genuinely elegant parts of JavaScript, including: Syntax Objects Functions Inheritance Arrays Regular expressions Methods Style Beautiful features

The real beauty? As you move ahead with the subset of JavaScript that this book presents, you'll also sidestep the need to unlearn all the bad parts. Of course, if you want to find out more about the bad parts and how to use them badly, simply consult any other JavaScript book. With JavaScript: The Good Parts, you'll discover a beautiful, elegant, lightweight and highlyexpressive language that lets you create effective code, whether you're managing object libraries or just trying to get Ajax to run fast. If you develop sites or applications for the Web, this book is an absolute must.

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Lends expertise to the topic

JavaScript was developed in a hurry before it could be refined, and thus has more 'bad parts' than most programming languages. Senior JavaScript architect at Yahoo! Douglas Crockford in JavaScript: The Good Parts lends expertise to the topic (he's considered a key expert by many in the field) and provides a survey of the language which enables effective code development. Any library strong in Java development and analysis needs JAVASCRIPT: THE GOOD PARTS.

Excellent way to become fluent in Javascript.

I decided to pick up this book because I had been using Javascript for years as a "garnish" on top of my web development, but usually only in the form of a few hacked-together utility functions and edited scripts. In truth, I was afraid of the language - it appeared to be a very inconsistent, buggy system that took arcane knowledge to master across browsers. After starting to work with a number of JS frameworks, I knew I needed to confront the language and learn it properly.

This book is possibly one of the best technical/programming related books I have had the pleasure of reading. It doesn't try to be a massive encyclopedic volume like most of my other technical books, so I didn't have to devote countless hours and days pushing through lengthy filler. Every section contains brief information about the most critical parts of Javascript you need to begin coding what you need right away in a tidy object-oriented fashion. If you have experience with any other C-based language and understand general OOP concepts, this book will make you fluent in Javascript with the least amount of time and effort on your part!

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Great Tips

I've watched all of Douglas' videos on Yahoo YUI Theater and this is the perfect companion.

Excellent, Dense Reference

If you are familiar with programming and need to add JavaScript to your tool belt, this book will quickly teach you not only the syntax of JavaScript, but how to best employ it. The book is short but thorough; by focusing only on the "good parts" of JavaScript and giving you design patterns on how to use them, it succeeds in giving you only the information you need to become a good JavaScript programmer, and no more. It will not teach you everything about JavaScript, or help you read badly written JavaScript. The author states that the book is not a reference, but I believe it is more of a reference than a how-to book.

Many of this book's topics are covered at Yahoo's "YUI Theater" in a collection of the author's lectures (http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/theater/ anything by Douglas Crockford). If you are interested in YUI at all, this book will help you understand the conventions used in YUI.

To paraphrase the author, if you want a book that teaches you how to be a horrible JavaScript programmer, get any other JavaScript book.

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Biased and slightly disappointing

The book is great for a summary of JavaScript's main concepts. Don't be fooled by the title though. "The best parts" is in Douglas Crockford's own opinion. Expect some biases and expect some things to be missing. For example, I wouldn't skip the concept of JSONp from a 2008 JavaScript book, but there's not a single reference to that here.
Get it if you have worked in a high-level language before and you care about writing neat JavaScript.
Skip it if you've been writing JavaScript and you want a comprehensive non-biased reminder or reference book.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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