Excellent, Dense Reference
If you are familiar with programming and need to add JavaScript to your tool belt, this book will quickly teach you not only the syntax of JavaScript, but how to best employ it. The book is short but thorough; by focusing only on the "good parts" of JavaScript and giving you design patterns on how to use them, it succeeds in giving you only the information you need to become a good JavaScript programmer, and no more. It will not teach you everything about JavaScript, or help you read badly written JavaScript. The author states that the book is not a reference, but I believe it is more of a reference than a how-to book.
Many of this book's topics are covered at Yahoo's "YUI Theater" in a collection of the author's lectures (http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/theater/ anything by Douglas Crockford). If you are interested in YUI at all, this book will help you understand the conventions used in YUI.
To paraphrase the author, if you want a book that teaches you how to be a horrible JavaScript programmer, get any other JavaScript book.
Great Tips
I've watched all of Douglas' videos on Yahoo YUI Theater and this is the perfect companion.
Biased and slightly disappointing
The book is great for a summary of JavaScript's main concepts. Don't be fooled by the title though. "The best parts" is in Douglas Crockford's own opinion. Expect some biases and expect some things to be missing. For example, I wouldn't skip the concept of JSONp from a 2008 JavaScript book, but there's not a single reference to that here.
Get it if you have worked in a high-level language before and you care about writing neat JavaScript.
Skip it if you've been writing JavaScript and you want a comprehensive non-biased reminder or reference book.
Lends expertise to the topic
JavaScript was developed in a hurry before it could be refined, and thus has more 'bad parts' than most programming languages. Senior JavaScript architect at Yahoo! Douglas Crockford in JavaScript: The Good Parts lends expertise to the topic (he's considered a key expert by many in the field) and provides a survey of the language which enables effective code development. Any library strong in Java development and analysis needs JAVASCRIPT: THE GOOD PARTS.
half best-practices tutorial, half advice collection
I bought this book expecting a textbook manual on how to use some JavaScript features. I ended up having an easy to read compilation of thoughts about the whole language, from an experienced Yahoo! member. But the best book feature was the way the author managed to convince us about the concept of "good part". It isn't an evangelic script - it has clear examples of why you should avoid certain language features (e.g., type inference in comparisons), along with sample recipes to make programming in JavaScript a pleasant experience (e.g., how to make good use of closures to encapsulate information within objects).
All in all, if you're into JavaScript (either warming up or as an old-school web developer) you will definitely benefit from the information within this book - and you'll find it light enough to make its reading pleasant!
(28 reviews)
