| Overview
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.
Editorial ReviewsProduct DescriptionMost 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. |
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Reader Reviews From Amazon (Ranked by 'Helpfulness') Average Customer Rating: based on 46 reviews. Effective JavaScript, 2009-06-16 Reviewer rating: I would recommend you think of this book as the JavaScript equivalent of Effective Java (2nd Edition) (Java Series) or Effective C++: 55 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs (3rd Edition) (Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series). You're still going to need to get JavaScript: The Definitive Guide to learn how to use JavaScript in your web pages, but this book will deepen your understanding of JavaScript and show you how to write cleaner code.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. | Pompous, 2009-05-21 Reviewer rating: If you are looking for real-world examples of how to put JavaScript to work, this is not your book. Some of the information is useful, but to little to justify the price of the book. After this read, I did realize one thing for sure: JavaScript is a pretty lame language and needs to go away. | Learning JavaScript, 2009-05-19 Reviewer rating: A must read for any web-developer. Having worked with JavaScript for a number of years in an ad-hoc fashion (AJAX, Firefox extensions, etc), this book has finally brought me the closure and understanding of the quirks and tricks of the language. Do not let the size of the book deceive you as Douglas Crockford manages to pack a lot of hard-earned wisdom into very few pages. In fact, this is not a book for beginners.
Best of all, "JavaScript: The Good Parts" will make you a better programmer. Just reading the book I've managed to spot at least half a dozen patterns and improvements to my own JavaScript code. Highly recommended. | Good Book. Well worth the price., 2009-05-13 Reviewer rating: JavaScript: The Good Parts, is a concise, well written JavaScript guide intended for JavaScript developers with some degree of experience, and familiarity with the language. It does an excellent job of demonstrating to the developer how to get away from the object oriented class model that most popular languages of today utilize, and use the class free prototypal inheritance model which JavaScript was designed for.
In addition to looking at broad design of JavaScript programming, Crockford points out common mistakes and problems that plague even experienced web developers. This ranges from more complex problems like JavaScript's lack of tail recursion optimization, to the preferred ways of declaring simple arrays and objects. Things any developer can benefit from.
Perhaps the most beneficial aspect of this book are the fully coded functions used to demonstrate shortfalls of JavaScript. These functions, such as is_array(), isNumber(), and trim(), not only provide the reader with an excellent solution, but gives a solid understanding of why the problem exists, and more importantly, why is must be corrected.
Like all books, JavaScript: The Good Parts isn't without problems. While it provides an ample number of examples, some of the examples are overly condensed, and others seem incomplete.
Overall JavaScript: The Good Parts is a valuable book which I would recommend to anybody who wishes to get a deeper understanding of JavaScript, or simply just wants to write more efficient and more soundly structured code.
| Not what I expected, 2009-04-13 Reviewer rating: I read the reviews of this book and others about JavaScript before I purchased this one. I'm late getting around to learning JS, but I figured that my knowledge of other programming languages would sustain me while I learned JS from one of the masters.
I found the book to be terribly frustrating. I got as far as Chapter 5, Inheritance, before I gave up on it. The book was too full of jargon, and even though it was written for experienced programmers just getting started in JS (like me), it seemed to assume a set of prior knowledge that I didn't have.
The author obviously knows his stuff. The language flows well and is logically organized. The syntax diagrams are clear and easy to follow if you're an experienced programmer. The book is well organized, and well edited. O'Reilly did their usual excellent job with it. It's simply not a good resource for learning JS from scratch.
I will return to this book after I learn JS from some other source. It may make more sense the second time around. |
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