Book Review: JavaScript the Good parts

Markus Andersson recently recommended a book to me called JavaScript the Good parts, by Douglas Crockford. As we were discussing inheritance around JavaScript it came up, so to demonstrate to power of my Kindle I purchased it so we could check out the specific example we were discussing.

JavaScript the Good parts is quite different from other language specific books I’ve read. It’s short and to the point, a feature not commonly found around American authors. It is however also opinionated, not everyone might agree with it’s content. Which is great because it means you have to think about the content.

What I really liked about it was how it described the different ways to arrange and encapsulate your JavaScript functionality. It also provides a heads up for a few more common mistakes.

The chapters on Regular Expressions, there is two of them if I remember correctly. One discussing the good and bad parts of Regular Expressions in JavaScript and then a reference chapter.

The book is suited both for people whom are new to JavaScript and to people who’ve worked with it before. But then again it is focused on the language primarily, so more senior JavaScript developers might focus more on different styles of JavaScript implementations.