Comments about oreilly JavaScript: The Good Parts:

At the beginning of last month Scott Hanselman had a Hanselminutes episode titled "JavaScript and jQuery: Moving beyond Alert()." During this episode he spoke with two JavaScript ... (experts? gurus?) users, and this book was mentioned as one to read if you wanted to get a better understanding of JavaScript. I primarily use jQuery, but since advanced JavaScript users recommend you go beyond that, I figured it was worth looking into what the author had to say.

Douglas Crockford also has videos available on Yahoo!, so I started there, where he talks about some of the items brought up in this book. However, since I couldn't focus long enough on the videos, and find reading to be a better experience, I picked up a copy of his book.

There were two things I wanted to get out of this book. First, I wanted to understand the best way to write my code, to have the least impact on others. Second, I wanted to gain at least a couple good tips about how JavaScript works 'under the hood.'

Having read the book I now have a better idea of what avenue to pursue for the first, to make my JavaScript code much more object-orientated (Closures). I also gained more than a dozen helpful tidbits reading the book, that did indeed further my knowledge of JavaScript, that will result in better code, no matter whether I use a library/framework or not.

The book is indeed short, and I was able to sit down with it and read it over the course of a handful of hours, although I expect to go back and read at least one of the chapters again (and keep the book around as a reference, since I purchased an electronic copy).

There are a handful of sections that are stepping stones to the functionality that should actually be used, and if you have no plans to use his JSLint analyzer, then one chapter will be unnecessary. However, while I was on the fence about passing code through it before, having now read his book, and the chapter where he details, again, the specifics on why JSLint flags certain JavaScript code, I believe I'll now actually run some code through it, once I implement his other recommendations.

But, as noted above, I did indeed learn a number of new things about JavaScript, that will help me write better code.

As already mentioned, I purchased an electronic copy of the book, and therefore can't speak to the quality of physical copies. However, I've generally found O'Reilly books to be well made.

Four of five stars, since I believe the free videos he did will help a number of people that learn that way, thereby making the purchase of this book unnecessary, as well as that he could have trimmed some of the extraneous material from this book to make it that much more concise.

Comments about oreilly JavaScript: The Good Parts:

"Programming is difficult business," says Douglas Crockford in the opening chapter. "It should never be undertaken in ignorance." It dawns on me as I read on, I have been struggling with JavaScript for years in ignorance.

JavaScript is not like other languages, it requires a different programming paradigm. I knew of JavaScript's prototypal and functional nature, but I hadn't ever grasped the power of lexical scoping, closure and object literals covered here.

Another common struggle with JavaScript is its faults. "Quality was not a motivating concern in the design, implementation, or standardization of JavaScript," says Crockford. "That puts a greater burden on the users of the language to resist the language's weaknesses." This book describes a subset of JavaScript that we can use safely and that keeps its elegance, flexibility and highly expressive power.

And there is more: A brief reference to standard JavaScript methods, a chapter on Style that makes the case for well written code, a detailed examination of Regular Expressions that made my head hurt, diagrammatic documentation of JavaScript grammar and syntax, and invaluable references to JSLint (a code quality tool) and JSON (the data interchange format).

All of this in 176 pages.

I became a fan of Douglas Crockford's work after watching his excellent "Crockford on JavaScript" lecture series online. Five lectures changed the way I think about JavaScript. I was delighted to receive a free copy of JavaScript: The Good Parts as part of the O'Reilly Blogger Review Program and to have the opportunity to explore this topic further and put my thoughts together.

Comments about oreilly JavaScript: The Good Parts:

Apparently the "best parts" of Javascript don't include mouse events, input, and so on. Now if the audience is people who know Javascript so cold they don't need that information, fine. Then why include all that elementary information on grammar and functions? And why use those clunky "railroad" diagrams instead of pseudocode, which takes up only a quarter of the space? Better yet, more actual examples of real code.

Comments about oreilly JavaScript: The Good Parts:

Finally, a programming book that I can read from front to back! Don't you hate it how all these programming books have to be hundred pages thick bricks that you'll never in your life read entirely?

This book is awesome simply because Douglas Crockford was artful enough to be succinct and to the point. What a pleasure to be able to read a book on Javascript from front to back, and feel like you've actually learned something!

Other reviews may miss the point. Being exhaustive is NOT useful, nor is it practical. Crockford homed in on all the good parts, so that you don't have to waste hundred hours learning parts that don't work, or that you wouldn't want to use anyway.

What can I say, this is the anti-thesis of those god-awful "Bible of XYZ" books, which have no purpose whatsoever anymore in the age of Google Search, and IDE inline documentation. This book however, has a purpose in that it makes an intelligent summary of the Javascript language that you can hope to read within a week.

Comments about oreilly JavaScript: The Good Parts:

The reader of "JavaScript: The Good Parts" by Douglas Crockford will get a very good idea of why JavaScript is considered a runt among programming languages. Crockford does his best to model good programming patterns and style in JavaScript. It is unfortunate and telling that the book is so thin. Crockford neither pulls his jabs at the language nor dumps on it unfairly, but gives a clear rationale for his opinions.

Like JavaScript, the book is more sure of what it is not than of what it really wants to be. Readers should read the preface seriously before going further -- but ignore the contradictory second sentence stating it is for programmers working with JavaScript for the first time. The book will interest language nerds, but it really should be read by intermediate JavaScript programmers who spend too much time debugging code they should never have written.

The short chapters make the book a relatively quick read, despite the somewhat advanced level of the material compared to other JavaScript books. Upon first glance at the size of the book, I was reminded of The Little Schemer (a tutorial on the Scheme programming language). Crockford's writing is easy to read, as if you were collecting thorough notes over a long series of lunch time talks. Incidentally, the structure of the book is unlike "Little Schemer" but Crockford does touch on functional programming techniques.

This book has a strong overtone of frustration with JavaScript. That isn't a criticism of Crockford, but sprinkled throughout the material are the tell-tale signs of what could have been, or should have been, but can never, ever be. It truly gets to a head in Chapter 9, titled "Style", in which 11 paragraphs in three pages start with "I". It is personal for Crockford.

Readers should be aware that there is virtually no error checking in the code. While omitting error checks is a common practice in trade book code samples, Crockford is making a point of illustrating good coding practice. The absence of a disclaimer is odd, but several of Crockford's examples do deal specifically with faulty conditional expressions. Take his warning in the preface to heart again here: "JavaScript: The Good Parts" won't tell you everything you should be doing to write good code.

JavaScript: The Good Parts is not a real reference, but if you do sporadic JavaScript programming it may be a book you will pick up again several times. That's because it is small enough and concise enough to act as a quick reference to the stuff that really is worth using, and some of the parts that really are best avoided

Comments about oreilly JavaScript: The Good Parts:

This is the most accurate and well-written book on JavaScript currently available. A must-read for anyone who writes production JavaScript code. Crockford teaches the correct use of JavaScript.

Comments about oreilly JavaScript: The Good Parts:

I really got alot of that book in JavaScript in specific, and in programming in general.I have read alot of JavaScript books but none of which handles these vital subjects about the language as JavaScript:The Good Parts does!

Comments about oreilly JavaScript: The Good Parts:

Wonderful book. Succinctly covers the language, and the parts of the language that I needed help with, and made me aware of things I did not know I needed help with.

It was just what I was hoping for.

Comments about oreilly JavaScript: The Good Parts:

I agree that this is an excellent book - I keep going back to it. My only complaint is the index. It often disappoints. Case in point - the 'this' keyword has only one page listed in the index at p49 while the keyword itself is sprinkled over 30 pages beginning at p27 which provides the initial explanation for it. I recommend the book but be prepared to mark up the index so its value will increase over time.

Comments about oreilly JavaScript: The Good Parts:

You could say that I'm the sort of person who complains a lot. I'd prefer to think of myself as someone with high, but reasonable, expectation who is often disappointed.

The purpose of that introduction is to try to convince you that I'm more likely to assume the role of critic than flatterer. Are that setup, maybe you'll guess that what follows is one doozy of a compliment.

It may be true that I have never enjoyed reading 19 pages of any programming book more than the first 19 pages (the first 2 chapters) of "JavaScript: The Good Parts".

Chapter 1 "The Good Parts", which serves as an introduction, is a pithy assessment of the good and the bad of JavaScript, and as importantly, the good and the bad of the approach, attitudes, and biases people bring with them to the topic that threaten to skew their opinions of the language. The author accomplishes this in four pages.

Before I continue, I want to make the point that I am not a huge fan of JavaScript, but these issues are not specific to Javascript. Many of the author's remarks apply to almost any language, or more generally the circumstance of working with something new and unfamiliar, especially when we are only reluctantly doing it because we are obligated to.

Chapter 2 "Grammar" must be the most succinct, well-written treatment of the grammar of a programming language I have ever read (and unfortunately I have read more than my fair share). I know we tend to think of writing in computer books as no more than a means to an end, but I would argue that Chapter 2 in "JavaScript: The Good Parts" is art.

I have read the entire book, but feel inspired to comment on just the first two chapters because they are special. I will say that the rest of the book does not disappoint.

The author's obvious sincerity and the matter-of-fact style of the writing may even persuade experienced programmers to set-aside their predispositions and prejudices in favor of fairly considering JavaScript.

Thanks to the author!

Finally, I want to say that I hope to see more ":The Good Parts" titles in the future from O'Reilly. I would argue that a great approach that works for more than just programming topics.

To answer a question readers of this review may be asking, while this is a very good first JavaScript book, it is not an appropriate introduction to programming. That's unfortunate for all of the prospective programmers out there. I would love to see an introductory programming book inspired by this one.