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.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Lends expertise to the topic
Comment: 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.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: half best-practices tutorial, half advice collection
Comment: I bought this book expecting a textbook manual on how to use some JavaScript features. I ended up having an easy to read compilation of thoughts about the whole language, from an experienced Yahoo! member. But the best book feature was the way the author managed to convince us about the concept of "good part". It isn't an evangelic script - it has clear examples of why you should avoid certain language features (e.g., type inference in comparisons), along with sample recipes to make programming in JavaScript a pleasant experience (e.g., how to make good use of closures to encapsulate information within objects).

All in all, if you're into JavaScript (either warming up or as an old-school web developer) you will definitely benefit from the information within this book - and you'll find it light enough to make its reading pleasant!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A great introduction to JavaScript
Comment: I purchased this book because I needed to learn JavaScript for a specific project I was given.

JavaScript: The Good Parts is great at describing the great features in JavaScript and what 'features' aren't worth the pain they'll put you through. This book is not a JavaScript reference book.

It provides a framework for building JavaScript applications that avoid common problems. The author describes avoiding problems with global variables (by wrapping them in an object or function), inheritance, and other small but important pitfalls.

I'm definately satisfied with the purchase. My biggest wish is that it was longer and more in-depth, as it's obvious the author has a lot more great JavaScript advice to impart.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: The book itself has its good and bad parts
Comment: I bought this book after reading a lot of articles by Douglas Crockford. While the book has very interesting parts and explain in depth things that you take for granted it also has some non-interesting (chapter 8: around 15 pages of "standard methods in standard types" including string.charAt, string.concat, and a lot more).

While I liked the book, I think it was 'filled' with this juiceless chapter because it was already too short (around 145 pages).

I think reading Douglas online is a better deal! See: http://www.crockford.com/

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Customer Rating:
Summary: At Long Last, A Serious Javascript Book
Comment: For about as long as it's been about, Javascript has endured a plague of poorly written and presented books. "A Million and One Ways to Write a Rollover." Many books will treat writing a function as an advanced move. It is left as an exercise for the reader how to manage ones code when the scale surpasses the trivial.

Douglas Crockford, who works at Yahoo, is unable to leave these questions in the realm of the intellectual, and he is in growing company. The era of large Javascript applications is upon us. By large, I mean applications that are mostly javascript, rather than HTML documents with a splash of code. This is more than mere AJAX. This is true application development, and with the scale must come application scale rigor.

It is to the problems of serious application developers that Crockford addresses the book. This is *not* an introductory book. It is generally assumed that the reader knows what the building blocks are.

Instead, Crockford focuses on issues such as organization, error avoidance, and writing code touched by many developers.

More importantly, Crockford expresses opinions. Technology as a field is never short on opinion, but technology books are a wasteland. Good luck finding a volume that spends much time at all criticizing its subject matter. Crockford pulls no punches. If he doesn't care for a given design decision, he says as much. It is, in a word, refreshing. Would that more books offered such candor.

Even if you disagree with Crockford's answers, the exercise of working through his arguments will teach you to ask better questions.

In exchange, you will learn about some of the more powerful but under-used aspects of Javascript, such as closures and first class functions. Furthermore, Crockford's detailed descriptions will give you clearer insight into exactly how the language really works.

In sum, Javascript: The Good Parts is the sort of book that can move you to the next level in your javascript development. Thank the gods the age of platonic, useless JS books is behind us.

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