JavaScript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford

By  on  

Rarely do I ever command you to do something but I've watched this video three times now and I'm completely mesmerized by Douglas Crockford's tech talk, JavaScript: The Good Parts.  During this hour long talk, Douglas Crockford shares his insight about both the good and bad parts of the JavaScript language.  He covers the language's embarrassing misteps, its valuable hacks, and its powerful features.

I can't recommend this video enough.  It's funny, educational, and enlightening.  Even if you can only leave the audio on in the background, you must give this video a listen.  Crockford wrote a JavaScript book with the same title which I cannot speak for.

Once you've had a chance to listen, share your thoughts -- what are you favorite "good parts" of JavaScript? What really burns you about the language?

Recent Features

Incredible Demos

  • By
    pointer Media Query

    As more devices emerge and differences in device interaction are implemented, the more important good CSS code will become.  In order to write good CSS, we need some indicator about device capabilities.  We've used CSS media queries thus far, with checks for max-width and pixel ratios.

  • By
    Create a Simple News Scroller Using MooTools, Part I:  The Basics

    News scroller have been around forever on the internet. Why? Because they're usually classy and effective. Over the next few weeks, we'll be taking a simple scroller and making it into a flexible, portable class. We have to crawl before we...

Discussion

  1. Absolutely second this post – awesome tips and principles for balancing idealism and pragmatism in a language where both can leave you high and dry, scratching your head wondering what went wrong…

    You can’t possibly listen to Crockford and not learn something new. Don’t even try.

  2. Wow. I figured he would be telling me stuff that I already knew, but he keeps on revealing amazing amounts of information that will improve my code significantly.

    Just blew me away.

  3. errr…. I don’t see any link to the video, am I missing something?

  4. my bad, video did not show up the first time

  5. Really nice… I learn a lot of things… mostly in the Object part, I was missing over there… Thanks for post it!
    Cheers.

  6. No one laughs at Steve, and everyone chuckles with Doug. (No real value, I know, but JavaScript developers should watch this).

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!