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Overview
In this Master Class video, JavaScript expert Douglas Crockford will scrape away the language's bad features to reveal all the 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. You'll learn why this powerful feature subset is more reliable, readable, and maintainable than the language as a whole, and discover firsthand how to create extensible and efficient code with it. Based on his popular O'Reilly book, JavaScript: The Good Parts, this class will demonstrate how JavaScript can be a beautiful, elegant, lightweight, and highly expressive language. Most programming languages contain good and bad parts, but JavaScript has more than its share of the bad, having been developed and then released in a hurry before it could be refined. Once 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 this Master Class video, JavaScript expert Douglas Crockford will scrape away the language's bad features to reveal all the 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. You'll learn why this powerful feature subset is more reliable, readable, and maintainable than the language as a whole, and discover firsthand how to create extensible and efficient code with it. Based on his popular O'Reilly book, JavaScript: The Good Parts, this class will demonstrate how JavaScript can be a beautiful, elegant, lightweight, and highly expressive language. What will I learn? A survey of JavaScript and its history Object-oriented programming in classical, prototypal, and functional styles A detailed look at JavaScript's elegant features, including syntax, objects, functions, inheritance, arrays, regular expressions, and methods Theory of the Document Object Model (DOM) Performance, security, and style with JavaScript How to sidestep the bad parts of JavaScript Is this Master Class video for me? If you develop sites or applications for the Web, this class is a must, whether you're managing object libraries or just trying to get Ajax to run faster.
Subscriber Reviews
Average Rating: 
Based on 60 Ratings
"Great" - by Juliana Cavalcanti on 12-FEB-2013
Reviewer Rating:
Great content from a true javascript master!
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"Excellent Class" - by Anonymous on 20-JAN-2013
Reviewer Rating:
This is a great introduction to all things JavaScript but if you don't know anything to begin with, it might be over your head. I'd suggest getting some practice with the language first, then come back here and learn about how you should use it the right way.
Since it is a long course, I'll break out some good parts to save you time if you're interested.
History of the language -- you can skip this unless you're a die hard programming fan and really want to know where JS came from.
A Survey of the Language -- a long section of the course, but this goes over all of JavaScript which is great for beginners.
Pseudoclassical, Prototypal, Functional Inheritance -- you'll want to learn the different types of inheritance so you can build larger scale apps while having manageable code. There are additional patterns not described in here though so look into those as well (AMD, jQuery Plugin Style, etc.)
ECMAScript 5 -- I'd say you could find newer information on this elsewhere, but the video isn't too long anyway
Theory of the DOM -- if you really want to know about the DOM check it out, but doubt its necessary
Ajax Performance -- if you're going to be doing Ajax this will help, of course.
Security -- learn about all the vulnerabilities in JS and the Browser. It will scare you straight.
Style -- take some time to learn good style JS. Your fellow developers will appreciate it.
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"JavaScript Master Class" - by gmskinscapsfan on 23-NOV-2011
Reviewer Rating:
Awesome. If Crockford has more out there, I will be viewing that as well.
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"Great video presentation and pacing" - by Shawn Giese on 02-DEC-2010
Reviewer Rating: 
A pleasure to watch though I think much of this is available on the internet for free.
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"Very informative" - by ddeaguiar on 30-MAY-2010
Reviewer Rating:
Lots of good content. A must watch if your interested in really understanding javascript.
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Table of Contents
Chapter/Selection | Time | |
|---|---|---|
 | 00:44:07 | |
| 00:56:21 | |
| 00:18:39 | |
| 00:15:39 | |
| 00:05:42 | |
| 00:16:48 | |
| 00:20:06 | |
| 00:38:30 | |
| 00:20:24 | |
| 00:22:49 | |
| 00:36:06 | |
| 00:19:28 | |
| 00:12:05 | |
| 00:24:02 |