Learning to Love JavaScript

Oh, it was a God sent when it came out! I use it inside the company I'm working at as a part of video series that all developers new to JavaScript are required to watch (during office hours, actually). I also give some overview talks in person that address some particular details of the language and the ecosystem. Thanks to this video and some others my job became a lot easier in recent years.

So far I got only positive feedback regarding this particular talk. It goes in some peculiarities and gets quite deep at some points but in general it gives a warm welcoming feeling to people new to the language. And as such it's really great to show it to newbies as quickly as possible. Some of the developers have doubts about whether JavaScript is really a language worth learning. Especially those server-side people who heard quite a lot of great things about GWT. But after this talk many of them change their minds and at least decide to give JS a try. Alex is telling them: - Look, here's JavaScript. It certainly can't do lots of things yet but it's really a nice language that is desperately willing to become your friend. Just don't be hostile to it and it won't fail you!

The part where Alex talks about inheritance with traits is particularly eye-opening for people coming from Java, .NET or PHP background.

At the moment Alex is more focused on Shadow DOM - a bit lesser known part of new web APIs - and he's overly a great guy and one of the most unbiased Google representative in standards bodies. I have a lot of respect for his work and wish him all the best.

Thanks, Alex!

Along the same lines, check out Douglas Crockford's extensive JavaScript lecture series: http://yuiblog.com/crockford/ Also a must watch. It details the history, good parts, and reasons to like JavaScript.

Actual link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seX7jYI96GE

The slides: http://infrequently.org/11/io/js