JavaScript, like all other programming languages, has its positives and negatives. Unfortunately, this language was developed and released hurriedly, before it could be refined, and hence there are quite a few drawbacks. JavaScript: The Good Parts focuses on the good parts of JavaScript, and reveals those parts that make the language more readable, reliable, and maintainable. The language as a whole does have its drawbacks, but the author does away with those bad features, and presents an effective subset of JavaScript that can be used to create an efficient and extensible code. Crockford, very effectively, shows readers the elegant side of this flawed, but popular language.

The book is meant for all those who develop sites or applications for the web. Divided into 10 chapters, JavaScript: The Good Parts begins with an overview of the ‘good parts’ of the language. The chapters present in the book include Functions, Inheritance, Objects, Arrays, Methods, Regular Expressions, Style, and Beautiful Features. These are followed by the drawbacks of JavaScript, which are included in the 5 Appendices titled Awful Parts, Bad Parts, Syntax Diagrams, JSON, and JSLint.

The book shows us that JavaScript is a highly expressive, elegant, and lightweight language, which can be used for effective coding. JavaScript: The Good Parts is focussed on making sure the user can discover a highly useful and simple language.

Douglas Crockford is an American entrepreneur and computer programmer.

Born in Minnesota, he has a degree in Radio and Television from the San Francisco State University. Cranford has made significant contributions to the field of software development, particularly in JavaScript. He has developed various JavaScript related tools like JSMin and JSLint. A senior JavaScript architect at Yahoo!, Crockford is noted for introducing the Javascript Object Notation (JSON) format and maintaining it. An authority on the topic, he is a regular speaker at conferences on JavaScript topics. Crockford has worked with companies like Paramount, Atari, and Lucasfilm. He was also the founder of State Software.