Crockford on JavaScript

Here is a playlist that teach you history of js and why JavaScript is the way it is?

The talks are given by Douglas Crockford author of JavaScript the good parts.

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Crockford is amazing! I practiced front-end JS on my own some time and then dropped it as I was better at back-end philosophy and languages. But when I found these golden videos, my appetite for JS grew back! I think I will reboot in back-end mode!

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Speaking as a sort of amateur computer historian, that video is a treasure. He glosses over some really important bits (like the entire history of LISP) but the talk is under two hours, so yeah.

I’d encourage everyone to watch the entire playlist, but if you don’t have the time, skip to the 8th video in the series, where Crockford goes into prescriptions on which parts of JS to use and which to avoid like a deadly snake. Here’s where he stops talking pop science on cognition (it’s worth watching, but kinda “well duh”) and starts talking about JavaScript.

BTW, the video is about 5 years old, and some of the stuff he’s talking about is dated (lexical scope is in ES6, Edge has replaced IE, and we have Babel to coddle Safari) but the core ideas are forever:

If you’re into CS history, I’d highly encourage you to watch The Mother of All Demos by Douglas Engelbart and the Xerox team from 1968. It’s quite an amazing presentation of many technologies that were brand new (like video conferencing and the mouse!)