JavaScript: The Good Parts
JavaScript: The Good Parts by Douglas CrockfordMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
As I understand it, JavaScript, the language, is a victim of the fight between Microsoft and Netscape, where the standardization process (ECMA? Really? Later known as the purveyors of fine standards like Microsoft's C# and CLI?) was used as a battleground, where features were strategically added to and removed from the draft standard while the implementations fought to catch up and gain an edge in features. Couple that with the way most programmers coded JavaScript: by cut-n-pasting it. JavaScript was originally a fairly decent language, with some eccentricities. Afterwards, it is a minefield of weird version issues, confusing behavior and poor examples.
Douglas Crockford's book is a fine advertisement for why JavaScript is not a complete loss. It has some nice ideas and Crockford does a good job of showing those off.
However, like all "subset" language explanations (there are certainly some good parts of C++, too; the problem is, whose?), you should not confuse this book with a reference or tutorial on the language. I can guarantee that the JavaScript you find in the wild won't be "the good parts". You will have to know and understand all of it, especially the bad parts.
A review from Goodreads.
