Douglas Crockford just published his first book titled JavaScript: The Good Parts. After reading this book, some of you may be left with the impression that Douglas is always complaining about some aspect of this very popular programming language. However, having been a user of the JavaScript language for about 7 years, and having used it extensively in small web sites and large web applications, all I can tell you is that I could not agree more with the author.

It is really unfortunate that we live in an imperfect world. As such, there is no perfect programming language, and there will probably never be. However, by gaining a deep understanding of the philosophy and the inner workings of a programming language, and by sticking to a subset of that language (what the author refers to as the “good parts”), we can all become better programmers by constructing more reliable and more maintainable programs.

In JavaScript: The Good Parts, Douglas extensively describes that good subset of the JavaScript language, occasionally warning to avoid the bad. I consider Douglas’ book a must-buy for anybody who’s serious about developing professional applications for the web. It’s definitely well worth the read!