JavaScript: The Good Parts by Crockford

JavaScript: The Good Parts by Crockford is written to be a quick and small reference for the javascript programmer.

It is not an exhaustive reference but rather a small collection of guidelines on how javascript code should be written.
The book touches on the major aspects of the language: objects, functions, prototypes, inheritance (with all its flavours), arrays and regular expressions.

Maybe the most important part of the language is given the most pages: functions. The chapter on functions gives a good understanding on function invocation patterns, on closures, callbacks, scope, augmentation, memoization, currying and function arguments.
Another important chapter is on inheritance and explains different inheritance styles. Although nice to read in general, the book also has some boring parts, like chapter 2 where javascript grammar is represented in many diagrams, one for each language construct.

There are some nice appendix chapters on the awful and the bad parts of javascript, which warn the reader of the possible pitfalls of using these parts of the language.

Alltogether, it’s a must-have book for every javascript programmer, not necesarrily to take up all ideas but at least to understand the point Douglas Crockford has and only adopt the agreed practices.

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