JavaScript: The Good Parts

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Unearthing the Excellence in JavaScript

By Douglas Crockford

Publisher: O'Reilly Media / Yahoo Press

Released: May 2008

Pages: 172

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 highly expressive 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.

Chapter 1 Good Parts
1. Why JavaScript?
2. Analyzing JavaScript
3. A Simple Testing Ground
Chapter 2 Grammar
1. Whitespace
2. Names
3. Numbers
4. Strings
5. Statements
6. Expressions
7. Literals
8. Functions
Chapter 3 Objects
1. Object Literals
2. Retrieval
3. Update
4. Reference
5. Prototype
6. Reflection
7. Enumeration
8. Delete
9. Global Abatement
Chapter 4 Functions
1. Function Objects
2. Function Literal
3. Invocation
4. Arguments
5. Return
6. Exceptions
7. Augmenting Types
8. Recursion
9. Scope
10. Closure
11. Callbacks
12. Module
13. Cascade
14. Curry
15. Memoization
Chapter 5 Inheritance
1. Pseudoclassical
2. Object Specifiers
3. Prototypal
4. Functional
5. Parts
Chapter 6 Arrays
1. Array Literals
2. Length
3. Delete
4. Enumeration
5. Confusion
6. Methods
7. Dimensions
Chapter 7 Regular Expressions
1. An Example
2. Construction
3. Elements
Chapter 8 Methods
Chapter 9 Style
Chapter 10 Beautiful Features

Appendix Awful Parts
1. Global Variables
2. Scope
3. Semicolon Insertion
4. Reserved Words
5. Unicode
6. typeof
7. parseInt
8. +
9. Floating Point
10. NaN
11. Phony Arrays
12. Falsy Values
13. hasOwnProperty
14. Object
Appendix Bad Parts
1. ==
2. with Statement
3. eval
4. continue Statement
5. switch Fall Through
6. Block-less Statements
7. ++ −−
8. Bitwise Operators
9. The function Statement Versus the function Expression
10. Typed Wrappers
11. new
12. void
Appendix JSLint
1. Undefined Variables and Functions
2. Members
3. Options
4. Semicolon
5. Line Breaking
6. Comma
7. Required Blocks
8. Forbidden Blocks
9. Expression Statements
10. for in Statement
11. switch Statement
12. var Statement
13. with Statement
14. =
15. == and !=
16. Labels
17. Unreachable Code
18. Confusing Pluses and Minuses
19. ++ and −−
20. Bitwise Operators
21. eval Is Evil
22. void
23. Regular Expressions
24. Constructors and new
25. Not Looked For
26. HTML
27. JSON
28. Report
Appendix Syntax Diagrams
Appendix JSON
1. JSON Syntax
2. Using JSON Securely
3. A JSON Parser
Colophon

Title:

JavaScript: The Good Parts

By:

Douglas Crockford

Publisher:

O'Reilly Media / Yahoo Press

Formats:

Print
Ebook
Safari Books Online

Print:

May 2008

Ebook:

December 2008

Pages:

172

Print ISBN:

978-0-596-51774-8

| ISBN 10:

0-596-51774-2

Ebook ISBN:

978-0-596-15873-6

| ISBN 10:

0-596-15873-4

Colophon

The animal on the cover of JavaScript: The Good Parts is a Plain Tiger butterfly (Danaus chrysippus).Outside of Asia, the insect is also known as the African Monarch. It is a medium-size butterfly characterized by bright orange wings with six black spots and alternating black-and-white stripes.

Its striking looks have been noted for millennia by scientists and artists. The writer Vladimir Nabokov--who was also a noted lepidopterist--had admiring words for the butterfly in an otherwise scathing New York Times book review of Alice Ford's Audubon's Butterflies, Moths, and Other Studies (The Studio Publications). In the book, Ford labels drawings made previous to and during Audubon's time in the 19th century as "scientifi-cally [sic] unsophisticated."

In response to Ford, Nabokov writes, "The unsophistication is all her own. She might have looked up John Abbot's prodigious representations of North American lepidoptera, 1797, or the splendid plates of 18th- and early-19th-century German lepidopterists.She might have traveled back some 33 centuries to the times of Tuthmosis IV or Amenophis III and, instead of the obvious scarab, found there frescoes with a marvelous Egyptian butterfly (subtly combining the pattern of our Painted Lady and the body of an African ally of the Monarch)."

While the Plain Tiger's beauty is part of its charm, its looks can also be deadly. During its larval stages, the butterfly ingests alkaloids that are poisonous to birds--its main predator--which are often attracted to the insect's markings. After ingesting the Plain Tiger, a bird will vomit repeatedly--occasionally fatally.If the bird lives, it will let other birds know to avoid the insect, which can also be recognized by its leisurely, meandering pattern of flying low to the earth.

The cover image is from Dover's Animals. The cover font is Adobe ITC Garamond. The text font is Linotype Birka; the heading font is Adobe Myriad Condensed; and the code font is LucasFont's TheSans Mono Condensed.

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oreillyJavaScript: The Good Parts

4.1

(based on 12 reviews)

88%

of respondents would recommend this to a friend.

Pros

Concise (6)
Accurate (4)
Easy to understand (4)
Helpful examples (4)
Well-written (4)

Cons

Not comprehensive enough (3)

Best Uses

Intermediate (7)
Expert (4)
Novice (3)

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Reviewed by 12 customers

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4/10/2012

5.0

Excellent read

By Ruud

from NL

About Me Designer, Developer, Sys Admin

Pros

Accurate
Concise

Cons

Best Uses

Expert
Intermediate

Comments about oreilly JavaScript: The Good Parts:

Gives you a very workable grip on the subject

3/12/2012

4.0

The most geeky Javascript book...

By Andrew Ckor

from Greece

About Me Designer, Developer

Pros

Well-written

Cons

Best Uses

Intermediate

Comments about oreilly JavaScript: The Good Parts:

It's one of the most geeky and well written Javascript books in the web era. I think it fits better to the, more familiar with Javascript, users and analyzes the good parts of js.

Worth buying it!

4/29/2011

(5 of 6 customers found this review helpful)

4.0

Focused discussion on the parts of JavaS

By strivinglife

from Madison, WI

About Me Developer

Pros

Cons

Best Uses

Intermediate
Novice

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.

12/29/2010

(11 of 12 customers found this review helpful)

4.0

Now I know what sets JavaScript apart

By admataz

from London

About Me Developer

Pros

Concise
Helpful examples

Cons

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Expert
Intermediate

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.

12/10/2010

(2 of 63 customers found this review helpful)

1.0

Woefully Incomplete

By Steve D

from Green Bay, WI

About Me Educator

Pros

Concise
Easy to understand
What there is is good

Cons

Not comprehensive enough
Too many omissions

Best Uses

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.

4/4/2010

(10 of 10 customers found this review helpful)

4.0

Short and sweet

By faB

from Belgium

About Me Developer

Pros

Accurate
Concise
Easy to understand
Helpful examples
Well-written

Cons

Not comprehensive enough

Best Uses

Expert
Intermediate
Novice

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.

2/10/2010

(12 of 14 customers found this review helpful)

4.0

Good for intermediate JS programmers

By Mitch

from Raleigh, NC

About Me Developer

Pros

Accurate
Concise
Easy to understand
Helpful examples
Well-written

Cons

Not comprehensive enough

Best Uses

Intermediate
Student

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

10/1/2009

(6 of 7 customers found this review helpful)

5.0

The best JavaScript book available

By FluffyClouds

from London

About Me Developer

Pros

Accurate
Concise
Easy to understand
Helpful examples
Well-written

Cons

Best Uses

Expert
Intermediate
Novice
Student

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.

4/7/2009

(4 of 6 customers found this review helpful)

5.0

brilliant book from a brilliant Man!

By Midooh

from Undisclosed

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!

3/16/2009

(3 of 3 customers found this review helpful)

5.0

Best JavaScript book I have read

By Chris Brandsma

from Undisclosed

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.

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Chapter 1 Good Parts

Why JavaScript?

Analyzing JavaScript

A Simple Testing Ground

Chapter 2 Grammar

Whitespace

Names

Numbers

Strings

Statements

Expressions

Literals

Functions

Chapter 3 Objects

Object Literals

Retrieval

Update

Reference

Prototype

Reflection

Enumeration

Delete

Global Abatement

Chapter 4 Functions

Function Objects

Function Literal

Invocation

Arguments

Return

Exceptions

Augmenting Types

Recursion

Scope

Closure

Callbacks

Module

Cascade

Curry

Memoization

Chapter 5 Inheritance

Pseudoclassical

Object Specifiers

Prototypal

Functional

Parts

Chapter 6 Arrays

Array Literals

Length

Delete

Enumeration

Confusion

Methods

Dimensions

Chapter 7 Regular Expressions

An Example

Construction

Elements

Chapter 8 Methods

Chapter 9 Style

Chapter 10 Beautiful Features

Appendix Awful Parts

Global Variables

Scope

Semicolon Insertion

Reserved Words

Unicode

typeof

parseInt

+

Floating Point

NaN

Phony Arrays

Falsy Values

hasOwnProperty

Object

Appendix Bad Parts

==

with Statement

eval

continue Statement