Comments on: Douglas Crockford Teaches JavaScript

Douglas Crockford Teaches JavaScript

ijoshua — Thu, 10 May 2007 14:09:38 -0800

Douglas Crockford, leading JavaScript Architect for Yahoo!, has been teaching a series of classes on JavaScript programming for other Yahoo! employees.
The JavaScript Programming Language [4 video clips: 1 (31 min) 2 (31 min) 3 (29min) 4 (20 min), presentation slides: zipped PPT]
An Inconvenient API: The Theory of the DOM [3 video clips: 1 (31 min) 2 (21 min) 3 (26 min), presentation slides: zipped PPT]
Advanced JavaScript [3 video clips: 1 (31 min) 2 (25 min) 3 (11 min), presentation slides: zipped PPT]

By: empath

empath — Thu, 10 May 2007 14:16:04 -0800

Nice! I'm looking forward to falling asleep while attempting to watch these. Not snarking, I just always fall asleep while watching these kinds of things, even if i'm interested in them.

By: Skorgu

Skorgu — Thu, 10 May 2007 14:28:43 -0800

Thanks, Crockford's remedial js and lint are absolutely essential, this looks to be excellent.

By: dws

dws — Thu, 10 May 2007 15:07:54 -0800

These are well worth the time, especially for the various backstories about how things got the way they are.

By: Western Infidels

Western Infidels — Thu, 10 May 2007 15:30:00 -0800

Wow, this looks like it may be very useful to me, as I've been trying to learn something about JavaScript from the very, very terrible books that he mentions. Is there any way to download the videos and watch them with some other player? The Yahoo! video player hates me.

By: davejay

davejay — Thu, 10 May 2007 15:47:43 -0800

Highly recommended coursework. The man knows what he's talking about.

By: creeptick

creeptick — Thu, 10 May 2007 15:59:15 -0800

Irony: finding these a few days ago and wondering why they weren't on meta only to see the fpp next. These are excellent as he's filled in the gaps about some odd things in js that have puzzled me for years. Highly recommended even if outside your field.

By: Heywood Mogroot

Heywood Mogroot — Thu, 10 May 2007 16:06:37 -0800

Screw JS/AS. As of yesterday (news takes longer to filter out to me now) I'm going SilverLight.

By: ijoshua

ijoshua — Thu, 10 May 2007 16:44:07 -0800

There are iPod-compatible .m4f downloads of the above videos here.

By: ijoshua

ijoshua — Thu, 10 May 2007 16:44:25 -0800

that’s .m4v

By: creeptick

creeptick — Thu, 10 May 2007 17:07:28 -0800

Mogroot: how's that different from flash? I'd expect more from Adobe's announcement making flex open source. Though I think I'll stick with prototype + scriptaculous + extend + Ajax.Net.

By: dvdgee

dvdgee — Thu, 10 May 2007 17:37:48 -0800

I really like how he makes fun of Prototype's use of $ as a function. I'd like to see Dean Edwards and Douglas Crockford go head on in a javascript fight to the death (a comment I already made on digg when this was posted there). Also, the state of Javascript books is getting slightly better. I highly recommend John Resig's "Pro Javascript Techniques", which comes from the same school of modern Javascript programming (object literals, etc) as Crockford. For beginners, Jeremy Keith's "DOM Scripting" is also pretty good, if somewhat web-standards pedantic and overly academic.

By: Western Infidels

Western Infidels — Thu, 10 May 2007 18:06:56 -0800

Thanks much, ijoshua, those are just the ticket! And to anyone as iPod-ignorant as myself -- yes, they'll play fine with the Quicktime player or even VLC.

By: JHarris

JHarris — Thu, 10 May 2007 18:07:59 -0800

God, that is a tiny viewing window.

By: Civil_Disobedient

Civil_Disobedient — Thu, 10 May 2007 18:50:54 -0800

Dammit, I just got though decompiling the Yahoo flash video player to try and snag the FLV file directly, when a little voice inside my head says, "You know, they might have it available for direct-download, stupid." And sure enough, they do. The JavaScript Programming Language: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 Advanced JavaScript Programming: part 1, part 2, part 3 (All M4V format)

By: Heywood Mogroot

Heywood Mogroot — Thu, 10 May 2007 21:15:35 -0800

how's that different from flash? Microsoft may be re-inventing several wheels, but I like what they're doing. VisualStudio, while not perfect, is my favorite IDE. C# 3.0, while not perfect, is my favorite high-level language. The CLR is a VERY solid piece of work, which is now allowing MS to hook in Python and Ruby into their APIs. Writing RIAs that run on Macs, Windows, Windows Mobile, and (so I gather RSN) the xbox360 is something I can get excited about. Surprisingly, there's no server-side lock-in with Silverlight. I'm hosting my stuff on my dotmac account right now. There is client-side lock, if one goes C#, but, really, the code itself is only about 20-30% of the IP of a particular application idea. If JavaScript had been actually maintained lo these past ~10 years I might be more excited about it.

By: gen

gen — Thu, 10 May 2007 22:39:12 -0800

Joe Hewitt, the developer of the Javascript debugger Firebug, presented at Yahoo! as well. Video hereYUI Theater: Joe Hewitt, Welcome to Firebug 1.0.

By: gen

gen — Thu, 10 May 2007 22:44:31 -0800

Heywood Mogroot:If JavaScript had been actually maintained lo these past ~10 years I might be more excited about it. Heywood- ECMAScript 4.0, which you'll know as Javascript 2.0 is being worked on actively. It's an open standard specification so you're welcome to jump in and help bring it to market faster if you're feeling the limitations of the current spec.

By: gen

gen — Thu, 10 May 2007 22:57:47 -0800

Heywood Mogroot: Microsoft may be re-inventing several wheels, but I like what they're doing. So, let me guess. You also still program in Visual Basic, you still use ActiveX controls on your websites, you listen to music on your Zune, and you enjoy Microsoft Bob as well? How many times do you have to be burned by Redmond to learn?

By: gen

gen — Thu, 10 May 2007 23:04:14 -0800

Heywood Mogroot: Surprisingly, there's no server-side lock-in with Silverlight. Not surprisingly, that's because Apache has over 50% of the market (primarily on *nix platforms.) Microsoft is FORCED to support non MSFT solutions on the server. It's not a friendly gesture, is a strategy, a tactic. Redmond doesn't support other platforms except when they are forced to by the marketplace.

By: rsanheim

rsanheim — Thu, 10 May 2007 23:55:11 -0800

Silverlight will go the same route as Sun's new JavaX venture - nowhere.

By: ryanrs

ryanrs — Fri, 11 May 2007 00:35:49 -0800

How many times do you have to be burned by Redmond to learn? Many, many times. (sigh)

By: gwint

gwint — Fri, 11 May 2007 04:13:02 -0800

I'm going SilverLight Silly season.

By: creeptick

creeptick — Fri, 11 May 2007 08:52:40 -0800

Heywood Mogroot: We're completely agreed on the MS's CLR and VS. However, I'd love to see MS extend the event model to handle more clientside events, and provide an easier way to write code for those clientside events that would work clientside, without the unnecessary postbacks. I got the SDK for Silverlight and plan to play with it. Thanks for making me aware.

By: Skorgu

Skorgu — Fri, 11 May 2007 09:04:41 -0800

Civil_Disobedient Thanks for the direct download links, way better than flvs. You might want to get firebug for when the site isn't so considerate, the "Net" console lets you grab the location of every file retreived by the browser. No decompiling of idiot js required.

By: Civil_Disobedient

Civil_Disobedient — Sat, 12 May 2007 07:45:42 -0800

You might want to get firebug for when the site isn't so considerate, the "Net" console lets you grab the location of every file retreived by the browser. 1. It's been installed since v 0.2. But thanks for the tip. 2. It doesn't help tracking streaming flash videos. The flash movie that most websites use is simply a generic player that takes parameters. Sometimes those parameters are obvious enough to reconstruct the source FLV. More often, there's a bunch of custom code and URLs that are embedded within the movie file itself.

By: Skorgu

Skorgu — Sun, 13 May 2007 06:43:53 -0800

If the browser fetches the FLV, it shows up in the net console. You shouldn't have to do any detective work beyond finding the one oddly-named 20+ meg file in the list. I've not come up against an flv page that didn't yield to firebug's awesome powa.

By: Civil_Disobedient

Civil_Disobedient — Sun, 13 May 2007 19:32:12 -0800

OK, I stand completely corrected. I honestly didn't bother to check whether Firebug was capturing the input stream for the flash player, but sure enough you are correct. Firebug amazes and humbles me, every day.