Why Not?

Last week I finished reading Douglas Crockford’s Javascript: The Good Parts. This is a book aimed at average to advanced Javascript developers or experienced developers that have an interest in the language but have only heard bad things about it.  If you are in either of these two camps, I highly recommend this book.

Crockford does well in debunking the myths that people have associated with Javascript in the past and enlightens us on how powerful the language actually is. If you know me, you will already know that I am a big fan of Javascript and how unique it is compared to normally used languages such as Java or C++.

When reading this book, I remembered a wonderful article by Steve Yegge on how to interview Ruby developers. The most important point I found in the article was that,

“It’s extremely uncommon for average programmers or language novices to be able to speak intelligently about their favorite language’s weaknesses, because the language books and tutorials rarely focus on the weaknesses.”

This is what I found to be the best part of Javascript: The Good Parts. The last chapters of the book focuses solely on where the language fails. Most introductory books and tutorials emphasize on only the strengths of a language, never the bad parts. Crockford takes this a step further by explaining why the good parts are good and the weaknesses of Javascript. If you consider yourself a serious Javascript developer, this is a must read. Although some parts will reiterate topics you will already know, the information is good.

On another note, I find it interesting to figure out the association of the animals on the covers of O’Reailly books. These animals represent the overall idea and theme that the book is trying to make. For Javascript: The Good Parts, I believe that the butterfly is being used to represent how Javascript began its life with a slow and ugly start, but as time went on, it grew to become a beautiful and important language.