JavaScript: The Good Parts 1st Edition

by Douglas Crockford (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-0596517748

ISBN-10: 9780596517748

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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.

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From the Preface

This is a book about the JavaScript programming language. It is intended for programmers who, by happenstance or curiosity, are venturing into JavaScript for the first time. It is also intended for programmers who have been working with JavaScript at a novice level and are now ready for a more sophisticated relationship with the language. JavaScript is a surprisingly powerful language. Its presents some challenges, but being a small language, it is easily mastered.

My goal here is to help you to learn to think in JavaScript. I will show you the components of the language and start you on the process of discovering the ways those components can be put together. This is not a reference book. It is not exhaustive about the language and its quirks. It doesn't contain everything you'll ever need to know. That stuff you can easily find online. Instead, this book just contains the things that are really important.

This is not a book for beginners. Someday I hope to write a JavaScript: The First Parts book, but this is not that book. This is not a book about Ajax or web programming. The focus is exclusively on JavaScript, which is just one of the languages the web developer must master.

About the Author

Douglas Crockford is a Senior JavaScript Architect at Yahoo!, well known for introducing and maintaining the JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) format. He's a regular speaker at conferences on advanced JavaScript topics, and serves on the ECMAScript committee.

Product details

Paperback: 176 pages
Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1st edition (May 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9780596517748
ISBN-13: 978-0596517748
ASIN: 0596517742
Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 0.4 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Customer Reviews: 686 customer ratings
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #113,012 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #11 in Functional Software Programming
- #65 in Software Design & Engineering
- #33 in JavaScript Programming (Books)

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Anil Philip

Cannot learn JavaScript from this book

Reviewed in the United States on July 17, 2019

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Perhaps if you are a highly intelligent person, you may learn JavaScript from this book. But otherwise it is a bewildering and frustrating book to read. One gets the feeling this was an academic paper written for his colleagues and he added a little 'introduction' material so he could sell the book to the rest of us. There is almost no explanation. This is unlike any other programming language book I have read. What a waste of money. I wish he had actually tried to teach JavaScript through a set of tutorials. At the beginning he starts off very witty and entertaining and one feels this book is a gem. But then as you go on your realize you're not learning JavaScript at all, and then and realize this book is either shallow or it's meant for people who already learned JavaScript. This is a really bad book.

16 people found this helpful

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David M Bristor

Essential if you're going to write JavaScript.

Reviewed in the United States on April 25, 2018

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I'd rate this 5 stars if it were updated to ES6. I used it 10 years ago, but hadn't written JS since then. When a project appeared that's ripe for JS, it was the first book I bought. Most of it is still relevant. It's definitely not a beginner's book, but IMHO should be in every JavaScript developer's library. Some of the content is less relevant, due to "improvements" in JavaScript. I quote "improvements", because most of them are syntactic sugar and the core deficiencies in JS are still there (and possibly more lurking in said "improvements").

I can't be sure, but my guess is that adhering to this book's practices has saved me many hours of frustration.

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Michael Stanford

Kindle edition riddled with errors dating back to 2008

Reviewed in the United States on June 1, 2014

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I love the concept: Javascript is a diamond in the rough. Discard the rough and you will be working with a diamond.

I also like the concrete advice: the parts of Javascript to use, the parts to discard, and the parts to beware of.

I also like the explanations: how and why the good parts work. But this is where I begin to have reservations about the book. Some of the explanations are incomprehensible because of poor editing. How is it possible that a collection of technology pace-setters (Crockford, O'Reilly, Amazon) can leave numerous "confirmed serious technical mistakes" in their work uncorrected for at least 4 years (I bought it in 2012)?

O'Reilly's errata website for this book lists 157 'confirmed' errata, of which 9 are classified as "Serious Technical Mistake." There are also 22 "unconfirmed errata." Most of the confirmed errata were marked as fixed shortly after publication, but at least one of them ("beget") is still in the Kindle edition. O'Reilly helpfully provides downloadable copies of the example code online, but the current version still contains errors that prevent the code from running (mode/node).

I keep going back and re-reading this book, so looking past all my wasted time trying to make sense of the errors, I would give a correctly edited edition of this book five stars for the educational insights sprinkled through it. Or maybe not any more. The state of the art has changed. For example, as many one-star reviewers point out, the whole section on Object.create is outdated. This book needs a rewrite.

41 people found this helpful

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Bruce

For me this book is perfect. I have a lot of experience developing production ...

Reviewed in the United States on November 8, 2015

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For me this book is perfect.

I have a lot of experience developing production applications using C/C++ in the past. I started learning JavaScript and found it easy to get started with. The online tutorials do a good job of exposing the syntax and basic concepts. Javascript is not interpreted C/C++, I found that it more resembled LISP the way it was used. I was definitely confused by the language (what is with all this function within a function stuff?) and I wanted to understand how the language works (literally how it is implemented).

Douglas clarified the concepts for me and now I feel more confident understanding how to use JavaScript. Also, he points out some major pitfalls, e.g. understanding how Arrays work is key to using them.

This book is NOT for beginners to programming.
This book is very opinionated on what the core language constructs are and how to use them and avoid the other parts.
This book is small but quite dense. I must have re-read some sections 5-6 times along with gathering other sources and running through some online examples. Probably depends on your background and level of experience with JavaScript but the concepts were pretty new to me.
Chapters 4&5 really get to the meat of JavaScript.
The book is an excellent reference and recommend owning it if you want to do serious programming with JavaScript.

Also, you can find Crockford on youtube quite easily. I went through his excellent series here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxAXlJEmNMg&list=PL7664379246A246CB

Enjoy!

Update: Note: I have purchased 3 O'Reilly books in the last couple of months. Each one of them has literally fallen apart. I will be reading a page and the page will come out of the binding. I am fairly gentle on the books so I think there is a binding problem at O'Reilly.

16 people found this helpful

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Michael Sankovich

A must read for any JS developer. Even though ...

Reviewed in the United States on January 27, 2018

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A must read for any JS developer. Even though the code is a bit outdated with the recent EcmaScript updates, the information within is still relevant.

8 people found this helpful

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Uncle Culpepper

Great, detailed information for those who need to write a lot of complex JS

Reviewed in the United States on September 30, 2016

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The average person, who uses javascript minimally like a person who doesn't want to have a nervous breakdown when dealing with scripting languages, probably won't need much that's in here. You could probably just toss your code into jsLint and be done with it. But, if you need to write complex interfaces and do a lot of calculations and treat JS as if it were an object oriented language, this is practically a must-read. Honestly, it has a lot of nice tips and ideas that let you know how javascript works that go really deep with it. I've had to write pages and pages of javascript for this project I've been working with and having read this has made my work go a lot smoother. Now if only I could get my co-workers to read it...

The most important things I've gotten out of this were a solid understanding of how javascript's 'this' works, and a lot of good tricks for simulating a class object. (could you do it with TypeScript? I mean, yeah, but why go through the effort of making that part of your project when you've got all the tools available already?)

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Mr. Paul J. Grenyer

Every JavaScript developer with a pre-existing working knowledge of JavaScript should read this book.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 13, 2017

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Every JavaScript developer with a pre-existing working knowledge of JavaScript should read this book. JavaScript is a powerful and varied language, but it was developed in a hurry and there’s plenty wrong with it. This book outlines the good bits of the language and highlights the bad bits and the bits you should just avoid. There’s also a fair amount about the author’s JSLint project in the appendices.

This book was written in 2008 and probably needs updating. It’s hard going in places and the diagrams did little to nothing to help my understanding. I’ve come away still wondering about new and constructors, but I know I just need to review them again when I need them and it’ll get clearer. I’m still not sure which function declaration syntax is best, but I’m not sure it matters too much.

5 people found this helpful

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Daniel Starns

Short, concise opinionated view towards a great language.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 7, 2019

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As a Node Js developer in 2019 I was hesitant to purchase what seems an ancient book. After cearful consideration I decided to buy. I knew there was going to be plenty of old code samples that you do have to get past... but albeit the theory and approach Crockford takes is one of interest. Crockford exercises a strict approach towards the language in that you could agree to disagree. I think this is a great short read for any one wanting to take JavaScript seriously, remember to preserve your own views on the language as well as adopt others.

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matthew tindall

For me I couldn't just learn out of this book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 15, 2018

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If i was to simply sit and read this book i wouldn't learn a thing, i feel that is written well however at points it could be explained in better ways, say that, i imagine this is just my style of learning. On the other hand if I come across a video on youtube which links to a topic in the book, i then can go back and understand it more thoroughly and then i can see where i can use these concepts in my own code.

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Gary Woodfine

Most programmers wouldn't believe Javascript has good parts! but Douglas Crockford does a great job ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 1, 2014

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Most programmers wouldn't believe Javascript has good parts! but Douglas Crockford does a great job highlighting them!
I bought this book and 2 others "Javascript the definitive guide" & "Javascript Patterns", as far as I am concerned these books are essential reading for any programmer!

These 3 books hold, the dubious honour, of being the only 3 programming books I have actually read cover to cover.
This book, is great, as I initally skim read this book over a lazy saturday afternoon, while drinking beer while sitting in sun lounger. Not something I often associate with tech books! I also watched some of the Douglas Crockfords videos on YouTube, which are great addendums, and a must.

I have re-read this book several times since, as I my journey into Javascript has progressed. The trilogy of javascript books has not left my Desktop, and I find myself refering to them time and again!

Douglas Crockfords style and approach to this book is just right! Easy to follow, and for a tech book a real page turner.

4 people found this helpful

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Dominic Humphries

Cured my hate of JS

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 21, 2014

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When I first heard the title, my immediate response was "Must be a very small book!"

And it is, but it's jam-packed with Good Stuff.

If you're somebody who's picked up JS as you went along and learned to hate it as you went, this is the book that will show you a beautiful, powerful, and remarkably flexible language with no shortcomings that can't be worked around.

17 people found this helpful

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brainBoru57

Highly recommended

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 25, 2016

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I'm doing the Udacity JavaScript basics course, and this is the perfect counterbalance to their experience-based teaching style, as it provides the rigour and details my learning style needs. For example, the railroad diagrams in teh first chapter or two were exactly what I needed to understand some of the basics. There's no superfluous text and, like the title says, just the good parts. Easy to read and you can dip into it. Highly recommended.

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Nick Jacobs

More Relevant Than Ever...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 7, 2015

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I highly, highly recommend this book. It was recommended to be by a friend after a code review of some JavaScript I had written and I found this book to be chock-full of immediately useful ideas and practices. Occasionally, I did find the author's recommendations to be a bit parochial, such as his assertion that you should always curly brackets (I know, I know, here we go again :) but they never obfuscated his intention: how to write better JavaScript.

With JavaScript enjoying a renaissance of sorts in these days, this book is more relevant than ever. JavaScript gives you so much rope to hang yourself by, you owe it to yourself to read this book and learn how you can cheat the hangman.

4 people found this helpful

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Mr G.

Concise book from the JS expert

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 23, 2013

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Douglas Crockford always manages to present the JavaScript language in an enjoyable, correct and historically relevant manner. The first surprise from the book is how few pages there are but this is a benefit because it reflects the JS language itself, allowing you to write very short functional code which can be built on to produce complex applications. The rail-road diagrams showing the language is a worthwhile addition to the book.

I suggest for real JavaScript beginners that they also check out the online Yahoo videos of Douglas Crockford's talks to help put the book into perspective and help provide greater detail of how JavaScript is different from other programming languages.

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E. L. Wisty

A good place to start

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 13, 2015

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This came recommended by the management in the company as the book to get to start learning about JavaScript and it certainly fills that role admirably and can certainly lay claim to the status of being the standard text for such a purpose. It won't in itself of course turn you into an expert, being more about the bares bones and not so much detail about patterns and practices - for the next stage I have turned to JavaScript Patterns .

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Miss

Paid for itself on the first day

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 26, 2016

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Im a developer by profession and this book save me on the first day of purchase. I had an error i was struggling with and realised the answer was in the book. Excellent book. I would say this book is for people who know a little of javascript and would like to ensure that the code they write is top notch stuff. If you are using javascript or would like to compliment what you know then this the right book for you. It is not a thick book it surprisingly short but jam pack with key points.

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Daniel Fairhead

Very very worth reading for all developers who do even a little JS.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 27, 2014

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Totally changed how I thought of JavaScript. I now feel like I can think comfortably in "the good parts" subset, and write code which I can understand later, which is clean, clear, and much less error-prone. I'm a Python programmer most of the time, but this book made me feel as if I could write JS all day if I needed to without getting too overly frustrated with the warts of "the bad parts".

Very worth while reading, even if you only do a small amount of JS.

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Gareth Greenwood

Tells you which bits of JS to ignore ... loud cheers ... :-))

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 10, 2016

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This book has 170-odd pages as against over 1000 for the so-called definitive guide. Interim conclusion? Roughly 17% of Javascript is worth using - so it's *very* useful to have a book that identifies the good bits.

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Craig West

Very good book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 27, 2019

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A great well-structured and explained book.

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Mike Gould

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 2, 2016

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Essential if you have to use javascript and want to keep your sanity

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Gareth Matthews

Probably the most useful javascript book printed - its just a shame that ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 14, 2016

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Probably the most useful javascript book printed - its just a shame that javascript sucks - looking at you crockford!

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