Douglas Crockford JavaScript Master Class

By: Douglas Crockford
Publisher:: O'Reilly Media
Released:: September 2009
Run time:: 5 hours 50 minutes

Description

In this Master Class video, JavaScript expert Douglas Crockford will scrape away the language's bad features to reveal all the 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. You'll learn why this powerful feature subset is more reliable, readable, and maintainable than the language as a whole, and discover firsthand how to create extensible and efficient code with it. Based on his popular O'Reilly book, JavaScript: The Good Parts, this class will demonstrate how JavaScript can be a beautiful, elegant, lightweight, and highly expressive language.

Full Description

Most programming languages contain good and bad parts, but JavaScript has more than its share of the bad, having been developed and then released in a hurry before it could be refined. Once 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 this Master Class video, JavaScript expert Douglas Crockford will scrape away the language's bad features to reveal all the 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. You'll learn why this powerful feature subset is more reliable, readable, and maintainable than the language as a whole, and discover firsthand how to create extensible and efficient code with it. Based on his popular O'Reilly book, JavaScript: The Good Parts, this class will demonstrate how JavaScript can be a beautiful, elegant, lightweight, and highly expressive language.

What will I learn?

* A survey of JavaScript and its history
* Object-oriented programming in classical, prototypal, and functional styles
* A detailed look at JavaScript's elegant features, including syntax, objects, functions, inheritance, arrays, regular expressions, and methods
* Theory of the Document Object Model (DOM)
* Performance, security, and style with JavaScript
* How to sidestep the bad parts of JavaScript

Is this Master Class video for me?
If you develop sites or applications for the Web, this class is a must, whether you're managing object libraries or just trying to get Ajax to run faster.

Instructor:

As a Senior JavaScript Architect at Yahoo!, Douglas Crockford has earned his reputation among people in the development community as the world's foremost authority on JavaScript. Well known for introducing and maintaining the JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) format, Crockford was Director of Technology at Lucasfilm, Director of New Media at Paramount, founder and CEO of Electric Communities/Communities.com, and founder and CTO of State Software. He also conducted research in games and music at Atari. The author of JavaScript: The Good Parts, Crockford is a regular speaker at conferences on advanced JavaScript topics. He serves on the JavaScript 2.0 committee at ECMA.

Table of Contents

1.
The History of the Language
44 minutes

Despite its strange history and convoluted development, Javascript is the most popular language in the world, with processors running on more computers than any other language. It is a flexible, stable and "serious" language, but not one programmers often take seriously. In this section, Doug Crockford explains the fascinating history of Javascript and why you should take it seriously and learn the language properly.
2.
A Survey of the Language: Part One
56 minutes

Javascript incorporates some of the best and worst ideas in programming languages. In this segment, Doug Crockford introduces the Javascript programming language, covering all of the core language features, including numbers, strings, operators, arrays, objects, and functions, pointing out the good, the bad, and the ugly features of the language as he goes. You'll learn about some common Javascript patterns, why lambda is cool, why you should never, ever use eval, and why you should always declare everything.
3.
A Survey of the Language: Part Two
18 minutes

Javascript incorporates some of the best and worst ideas in programming languages. In this segment, Doug Crockford introduces the Javascript programming language, covering all of the core language features, including numbers, strings, operators, arrays, objects, and functions, pointing out the good, the bad, and the ugly features of the language as he goes. You'll learn about some common Javascript patterns, why lambda is cool, why you should never, ever use eval, and why you should always declare everything.
4.
Pseudoclassical Inheritance
15 minutes

Unlike other languages that support inheritance, Javascript uses what is known as prototypal inheritance, in which objects inherit directly from other objects (no classes involved!). Doug Crockford explains what prototypal inheritance is, how it differs from classical inheritance, and how to use prototypal inheritance to extend object behaviors and properties.
5.
Prototypal Inheritance (Free Preview)
5 minutes

In this segment, Doug Crockford continues his exploration of prototypal inheritance; you'll learn the details of how it works and how to use it properly.
6.
Functional Inheritance
16 minutes

Javascript functions are extremely flexible. In this segment, Doug Crockford shows how you can use the Module pattern and the Closure pattern to create constructor functions that can create objects, hide data, and simplify inheritance.
7.
ECMAScript: The Fifth Edition
20 minutes

In this segment, Doug Crockford discusses the forthcoming fifth edition of ECMAScript, the language specification upon which Javascript is based. This is the first new edition of the language since 1999, and incorporates important security enhancements as well as improvements to the language.
8.
Ajax Performance
22 minutes

You already know that you can deliver applications with the browser using Javascript and Ajax. Did you know that the DOM interface is a common bottleneck in Javascript applications? That the Javascript compiler does very little optimization for you? In this segment, you'll learn how to effectively use the browser to deliver an application and optimize those applications with plenty of tips from Doug Crockford.
9.
Security
36 minutes

The browser is not a safe programming environment, and Javascript is not a secure programming language. In this segment, you'll learn why. You'll also learn some of the ways you can prevent some of the most common security dangers, like cross-site scripting attacks, and what Doug Crockford and others are doing to help solve the Web's most pressing security problems.
10.
Style
19 minutes

Despite all the problems with Javascript - global variables, semicolon insertion, phony arrays, etc. - it is possible to write excellent Javascript code. In this segment, Doug Crockford steps you through some basic style guidelines for writing good Javascript. You'll learn why you should always use semicolons (and put them in the right places!), why placement of curly braces matter, and how to use the closure pattern to hide global variables.
11.
JSLint
12 minutes

JSLint is a Javascript code quality tool that Doug Crockford wrote to help him write better Javascript programs. In this segment, Doug describes how you can use JSLint to help improve the robustness and portability of your programs, enforce style rules, spot errors and eliminate globals - in short, to write good Javascript code.
12.
JSON
24 minutes

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight data-interchange format, and is a surprising "good part" of Javascript. JSON has been in the Javascript language for a long time, and was discovered by Doug Crockford when he was looking for an efficient data format. It is now part of the ECMAScript specficiation and is available widely in a variety of other languages including Java, Objective-C, PHP and Ruby. In this segment, Doug Crockford describes JSON and shows how to convert XML into JSON in three different ways.
13.
Theory of the DOM Part One
38 minutes

If you're going to create applications for the browser with Javascript, you need to understand the DOM. In this segment, Doug Crockford describes in-depth what the DOM is and how to work with it using Javascript. You'll learn about tree structures and events, why bubbling is better than trickling, why memory management with Ajax programs is so important, and how to cope with the differences and bugs in browser DOMs.
14.
Theory of the DOM Part Two
20 minutes

If you're going to create applications for the browser with Javascript, you need to understand the DOM. In this segment, Doug Crockford describes in-depth what the DOM is and how to work with it using Javascript. You'll learn about tree structures and events, why bubbling is better than trickling, why memory management with Ajax programs is so important, and how to cope with the differences and bugs in browser DOMs.