Google TechTalks
11 HN recommenders · recommended in 19 months, 2009–2020
1:03:48 · 589K views · Feb 28, 2009
Douglas Crockford's 2009 Google tech talk on the good and bad parts of JavaScript, based on his book. He argues for using a reliable subset of the language and avoiding its flawed features.
A classic recommended to people learning JavaScript, even though some find it dogmatic and dated.
20 comments from Hacker News
I will admit to having been an anti-JavaScript elitist (without really knowing JS.) This video changed my mind: this video (google tech talk, "JavaScript: the good parts") Two facts mentioned in the video that I didn't previously know and make me feel better about JavaScript: 1- JavaScript is lisp in disguise 2- The name JavaScript is an inside joke referencing the language's differences from Java, not its similarities. That was enough to make me change my mind, and I'm currently enjoying learning JavaScript unashamedly. Browser differences and lack of standards are a PITA, but OTOH, they all have awesome debuggers - HTML+JavaScript may be the only UI toolkit + dev environment that comes packaged with ALL computers, and for that reason has the widest reach. There's no question that the JS world is a bit wild west compared to other languages, but there's also no question that the situation is getting better over time, and that depending on what you're coding, there are huge advantages to using it.
Crockford's "JavaScript: The Good Parts" is the gold standard for best practices. Pretty much anyone who works in JS will recommend it. Here's a video which is a condensed version of what's in the book: this video
The best way I've found to learn JavaScript is through anything by Douglas Crawford. 'JavaScript the Good Parts' is especially good. [LINK] this video
A good place to start is MDN (Mozilla Developer Network): [LINK] MDN Javascript resources: [LINK] Before starting the tutorials, take some time to learn what's available in the Firefox developer tools. You won't need most of them at first, but knowing what's available will help as you gain experience. The two developer tools you'll probably use most when leaning are the Scratchpad ( [LINK] ) and Console ( [LINK] ) [LINK] & [LINK] will also be very useful while learning JS I haven't taken any but Udacity has some javascript courses ( [LINK] ), just tick the "Javascript" checkbox under "Technology" in the left menu Some additional resources: [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] Dated but still worth watching: this video [LINK] edit: added addl. resources
When comparing Office 2007 (and 2010) with Office 97 one can clearly see these are not "the same old apps". Especially when combined with the Office Servers. JavaScript isn't such a bad language. It's essentially Scheme in C cloths. It has first-class functions, lexical closures, prototype-inheritance and more. Just avoid the bad parts. See this Google Talk by Douglas Crockford this video