Javascript Master Class

I have read Javascript: The Good Parts* cover to cover mul­ti­ple times. ( Well OK lately, its been BOF to EOF on my iPad ) When some­one is as res­olute and prag­matic as Dou­glas Crock­ford is to a tech­nol­ogy as widely mis­un­der­stood and reviled as Javascript, human beings take notice. I believe it is inher­ent in our evo­lu­tion to take notice at those who are that tena­cious with­out being bull­headed.

Since I was learn­ing node.js dur­ing my two month work hia­tus, I thought it would be a good time to brush up on good Javascript style and even­tu­ally I started pok­ing around his book once more, and lo, I found out that Safari Books Online** had the entirety of his Javascript Mas­ter Class avail­able for stream­ing. Start­ing out a 5+ hour tuto­r­ial at almost mid­night would not count as one of the smartest things I have done in my life, but it was worth it. Unfor­tu­nately I had just got­ten past my sec­ond wind when he hit Pseudo­clas­si­cal Inher­i­tance in Javascript. By far that is one of the most con­vo­luted processes I have ever had the plea­sure to try grokking at 2am. I have had night­mares for weeks because I called it quits for the night at that point.

In all hon­esty, the videos are phe­nom­e­nal. If you are even con­sid­er­ing being part of the future of web appli­ca­tion devel­op­ment I sug­gest you look at the videos. Think of it like this, if some­one can pref­ace their highly detailed and tech­ni­cal talk about Javascript by start­ing with the tech­nol­ogy of puch­cards, then that per­son is an Alpha in his field and you should lis­ten to him when he speaks. I was com­pletely taken in from the first video. Read­ing his book on the sub­ject mat­ter and lis­ten­ing to him speak about it are two com­pletely dif­fer­ent things. Also I believe he goes into a lit­tle more detail in the videos.

Another Dou­glas, Dou­glas Engelbart

Many parts of the videos I have returned to, and reviewed to make sure I absorbed all the details, but that one sec­tion about Pseudo­clas­si­cal Inher­i­tance I recoil in hor­ror every­time I think about try­ing to under­stand it. I still have a bunch of notes of things to look into, they are mostly lit­tle sparks that lit up in my head while I was learn­ing things about Javascript I still need to try. (One of which, was “The mother of all demos” by Dou­glas Engel­bart which I am embar­rassed to admit I have not looked at yet)

Hav­ing knowl­edge of the his­tory of tech­nol­ogy I believe is a very healthy prac­tice. Espe­cially with the head­long rush we tech­nol­o­gists have found our­selves in, there is always some­thing stir­ring in me to step back and look at the big pic­ture. I believe that by study­ing where we have tread to get where we are tech­no­log­i­cally gives you a bet­ter under­stand­ing and appre­ci­a­tion for the short­com­ing and awe­some­ness of tech­nol­ogy today. But I think crit­i­cally it gives you an oppor­tu­nity to cut through the stam­pede of devel­op­ers and find new ways to direct tech­nol­ogy in the future. That I believe is one of Mr. Crockford’s strengths.

*Dis­claimer: The Ama­zon refer­ral code (if there is one here) is Mr. Crock­fords. I make noth­ing if you click on that link.
** I am still angry at Safari Books Online after their stu­pid iPad app fiasco, so no link for them. Half-assed soft­ware devel­op­ment is a car­di­nal sin in my eyes. I will rant about this later.