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How JavaScript Works

by Douglas Crockford (Author)

4.4 100 ratings

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Douglas Crockford starts by looking at the fundamentals: names, numbers, booleans, characters, and bottom values. JavaScript’s number type is shown to be faulty and limiting, but then Crockford shows how to repair those problems. He then moves on to data structures and functions, exploring the underlying mechanisms and then uses higher order functions to achieve class-free object oriented programming. The book also looks at eventual programming, testing, and purity, all the while looking at the requirements of The Next Language. Most of our languages are deeply rooted in the paradigm that produced FORTRAN. Crockford attacks those roots, liberating us to consider the next paradigm.He also presents a strawman language and develops a complete transpiler to implement it. The book is deep, dense, full of code, and has moments when it is intentionally funny.

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Review

[
{"number": 0, "chapter": "Read Me First!"},
{"number": 1, "chapter": "How Names Work"},
{"number": 2, "chapter": "How Numbers Work"},
{"number": 3, "chapter": "How Big Integers Work"},
{"number": 4, "chapter": "How Big Floating Point Works"},
{"number": 5, "chapter": "How Big Big Rationals Work"},
{"number": 6, "chapter": "How Booleans Work"},
{"number": 7, "chapter": "How Arrays Works"},
{"number": 8, "chapter": "How Objects Work"},
{"number": 9, "chapter": "How Strings Work"},
{"number": 10, "chapter": "How The Bottom Values Work"},
{"number": 11, "chapter": "How Statements Work"},
{"number": 12, "chapter": "How Functions Work"},
{"number": 13, "chapter": "How Generators Work"},
{"number": 14, "chapter": "How Exceptions Work"},
{"number": 15, "chapter": "How Programs Work"},
{"number": 16, "chapter": "How this Works"},
{"number": 17, "chapter": "How Classfree Works"},
{"number": 18, "chapter": "How Tail Calls Work"},
{"number": 19, "chapter": "How Purity Works"},
{"number": 20, "chapter": "How Eventual Programming Works"},
{"number": 21, "chapter": "How Date Works"},
{"number": 22, "chapter": "How JSON Works"},
{"number": 23, "chapter": "How Testing Works"},
{"number": 24, "chapter": "How Optimization Works"},
{"number": 25, "chapter": "How Transpiling Works"},
{"number": 26, "chapter": "How Tokenizing Works"},
{"number": 27, "chapter": "How Parsing Works"},
{"number": 28, "chapter": "How Code Generation Works"},
{"number": 29, "chapter": "How Runtimes Work"},
{"number": 30, "chapter": "How Wat! Works"},
{"number": 31, "chapter": "How This Book Works"}
]

About the Author

Douglas Crockford has been called a JavaScript Guru, but he is more of a Mahatma. He was born in Frostbite Falls, Minnesota, but left when he was only six months old because it was just too damn cold. He has worked in learning systems, small business systems, office automation, games, interactive music, multimedia, location-based entertainment, social systems, and programming languages. He is the inventor of Tilton, the ugliest programming language that was not specifically designed to be an ugly programming language. He is best known for having discovered that there are good parts in JavaScript. That was the first important discovery of the Twenty First Century. He also discovered the JSON Data Interchange Format, the world's most loved data format.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Virgule-Solidus (October 18, 2018)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 279 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1949815005
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1949815009
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.08 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7 x 0.63 x 10 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,450,446 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #98 in Functional Software Programming
- #354 in JavaScript Programming (Books)
- #4,349 in Programming Languages (Books)

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4.4 100 ratings

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Douglas Crockford is the author of How JavaScript Works. He has been called a JavaScript Guru, but he is more of a Mahatma. He was born in Frostbite Falls, Minnesota, but left when he was only six months old because it was just too damn cold. He has worked in learning systems, small business systems, office automation, games, interactive music, multimedia, location-based entertainment, social systems, and programming languages. He is the inventor of Tilton, the ugliest programming language that was not specifically designed to be an ugly programming language. He is best known for having discovered that there are good parts in JavaScript. That was the first important discovery of the Twenty First Century. He also discovered the JSON Data Interchange Format, the world’s most loved data format.

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Customers find the book provides useful explanations and opinions on core JavaScript. They describe it as an entertaining read with insightful content. Readers also mention it's one of the best JavaScript books available today.

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Insight Enjoyment

11 customers mention "Insight"11 positive0 negative

Customers find the book insightful and helpful. It provides useful explanations and opinions on core JavaScript. The author explores its idiosyncrasies in an honest style, with plenty of examples. Some chapters study the implementation details of libraries. The book mixes serious thought experiments with history and humorous commentary, making it a must-read for JS developers.

"...a pleasure to read and contains useful explainations and opinions on core JavaScript topics such as primitive types, asynchronous programming and..." Read more

"...Douglas Crockford is also deeply opinionated and so therefore is this book, however, you may stand to gain more from reading this book if you don't..." Read more

"...Some of the chapters are very close studies of the implementation details of libraries that Crockford sketches in order to explain a concept to his..." Read more

"...Here, he explores its idiosyncrasies in a warts-and-all style, with plenty of examples of how to push this dynamic language past its apparent limits...." Read more

10 customers mention "Enjoyment"10 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the book. They find it a fun read with insightful content about JavaScript. The book is described as great and a masterpiece.

"...This book is a pleasure to read and contains useful explainations and opinions on core JavaScript topics such as primitive types, asynchronous..." Read more

"The information is deep, deeply explored and clearly, entertainingly, concisely communicated...." Read more

"Very good book" Read more

"...Please try again later." --- The book was fun and explored some of the way you should be using JavaScript rather than how..." Read more

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Ernest T. Bass
Fun, packed with valuable information
Reviewed in the United States on August 6, 2019
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I am a HUGE fan of Doug Crockford and find his writing to be superb. This book is a pleasure to read and contains useful explainations and opinions on core JavaScript topics such as primitive types, asynchronous programming and how the language works at a lower level than most users are familiar with.

My favorite thing about Mr. Crockford's writings is his ability to link current language features with their history and origin.

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3 people found this helpful

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Christohper Garner
What a great book
Reviewed in the United States on March 11, 2019
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The information is deep, deeply explored and clearly, entertainingly, concisely communicated. Douglas Crockford is also deeply opinionated and so therefore is this book, however, you may stand to gain more from reading this book if you don't agree with his opinions than if you do. There are many books on many things, not all of them are good and fewer are great. How Javascript Works it simply great.

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4 people found this helpful

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Andrew P.
Helpful book
Reviewed in the United States on August 18, 2023
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Very good book

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Ryan Mease
Provides Context and Authority to JavaScript Development
Reviewed in the United States on March 9, 2019
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This book is hard to describe. Crockford mixes serious thought experiments with history and humorous commentary. Some of the chapters are very close studies of the implementation details of libraries that Crockford sketches in order to explain a concept to his readers. Other chapters are more cursory and amount to a grab bag of wisdom and witticisms about a particular topic. The chapters are thoughtfully arranged, but they can also be read in isolation. The corpus feels a bit like scripture, in that way. I know many engineers that would find this book too esoteric and unapproachable, but I know others that would find it very refreshing. We need more software books like this one.

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11 people found this helpful

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GB
Truly thought-provoking guidance from a master
Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2019
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In "Good Parts", Douglas Crockford popularized JavaScript as a singular programming language, in a class of its own. Here, he explores its idiosyncrasies in a warts-and-all style, with plenty of examples of how to push this dynamic language past its apparent limits. Crockford imbues this tome with his deep knowledge of the history of the programming craft, and while contextualizing the ins and outs of JavaScript, he makes a studied case for the traits of the language that ought to replace it.

Note: This is not a learn-to-program or "learn JavaScript" book. It certainly does not spend much time on the topic of web-based user interfaces. It doesn't cover the Node ecosystem, or the ever-increasing number of app frameworks. Rather it anatomizes of the language's features, strengths, and shortcomings. It is more a "now you've learned to use it, just what the heck is going on anyway?" sort of book.

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9 people found this helpful

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KTR73
Even though wun makes more sense, sometimes you should just go with the flow
Reviewed in the United States on March 1, 2021
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The author clearly knows JavaScript. You can learn a lot from what he teaches in this book. But his insistence on using “wun” instead of “one” is so irritating to me that I had to knock a few stars off. He tells you why he spells it as “wun” throughout the book, but every time I saw it, it slowed me down. I get why he did it, but I didn’t like it (even though his spelling “makes more sense”).

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5 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer
Probably the best JavaScript book today
Reviewed in the United States on August 3, 2019
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Let me be clear, this book is not for beginners. Douglas has a specific sense of humor and some people will be offended.

But girl, this book has some serious wisdom. That is what you get when you have ++40 years of experience.
I'm on a third of Douglas' road.

Thank you for this gem.

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Amazon Customer

Probably the best JavaScript book today

Reviewed in the United States on August 3, 2019
Let me be clear, this book is not for beginners. Douglas has a specific sense of humor and some people will be offended.

But girl, this book has some serious wisdom. That is what you get when you have ++40 years of experience.
I'm on a third of Douglas' road.

Thank you for this gem.

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5 people found this helpful

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William Entriken
Not as described
Reviewed in the United States on April 18, 2020
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I purchased this book because the author required me to do that before he would acknowledge an issue I posted on his GitHub repository. After proving that I purchased the book he still ignored the issue.

You can find his repo and notice many deleted issues (i.e. the non-contiguous numbers).

Further, I had sent numerous errata to the requested address long ago. He acknowledged receipt and yet still the book's "erratums" website claims "Incredibly, no mistakes have been found yet. Please try again later."

---

The book was fun and explored some of the way you should be using JavaScript rather than how JavaScript works. A key topic of the book is to lament certain JavaScript features which then culminates in the definition of an unfinished educational language which transpiles into a subset of JavaScript. I would have been more interested in a call-to-arms which invited participation and hoped to actually solve the identified problems.

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23 people found this helpful

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Francisco Gil Leyva García
Good explanations and details
Reviewed in Mexico on June 24, 2021
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explains features that are not perceived in manuals

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Jacque Goupil
A poignant book of bold claims about the best way to code. Entertaining and informative.
Reviewed in Canada on June 1, 2020
Verified Purchase
Crockford has strongly-held beliefs in the good and the bad parts of JavaScript and the right way to write code, and he is quick to call anyone who disagrees an idiot. As someone who shares a lot of his views, I found this writing style quite entertaining and refreshing compared to most textbooks which simply list all features of a language. His sharp tongue, however, might make skeptics even less receptive to his words.

This book explains how to get rid of the bad parts of JavaScript that people make fun of by using a much smaller subset of the language, and goes in to the details of how JavaScript works under the hood. It's an easy-to-digest look at low-level abstractions of the ECMAScript standard.

A few chapters are absolutely redundant however, especially those which contain annotated source code for full libraries which in the end have little to teach. There's also a good chunk of the book dedicated to a hideous language Crockford invented and its compiler written in JS, and it feels really out of place.

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Lorenzo
Un libro che ogni sviluppatore javascript deve assolutamente leggere
Reviewed in Italy on July 19, 2020
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Crockford da luce al seguito (simbolico) di The Good Parts, con un libro che spiazzerà molti per via dell'approccio diretto e "senza peli sulla lingua" che è tipico dello stile di Crockford.

Dopo una prima disamina su delle librerie da lui sviluppate per estendere i numeri in Javascript (in netto contrasto con TC39 che ha da poco introdotto i "big integer" all'interno di Javascript) passa all'analisi dell'attuale standard ES6 pesandone in pro e i contro. Per concludere, negli ultimi capitoli con la definizione di un linguaggio "Neo", che possa essere compilato in Javascript.

I capitoli che ho trovato più utili sono stati quelli sulla programmazione distribuita (la libreria parseq) e quello sui test (la libreria JSCheck, ispirato da Quickcheck per Haskell)

Il libro deve sicuramente essere letto più volte (i capitoli possono essere letti - in linea di massima - in modo indipendente) in quanto ad ogni lettura si trovano sfumature e commenti che nella prima lettura possono essere sfuggiti.

Tutto il software è disponibile sulla pagina di github.

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Samuel MV
Lo ha vuelto a hacer ... muy recomendable.
Reviewed in Spain on April 22, 2020
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Si en su momento te gustó Javascript The Good Parts, creo que este nuevo libro de Douglas Crockford no te va a decepcionar.

Sigue avanzando en cómo programar y aprovechar mejor Javascript (evitando las partes oscuras o problemáticas), pero teniendo en cuenta las últimas versiones de lenguaje (en el que desgraciadamente se ha intentado pervertir su naturaleza de lenguaje basado en prototipos)

Creo que también es interesante para aquellos que no programan en Javascript pero disfrutan aprendiendo a programar con nuevos puntos de vista.

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WoPo
Längst überfällig
Reviewed in Germany on December 21, 2019
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Wenn man es wirklich zu verstehen versucht, so kann jederman den Tenor nur als absolut notwendig ansehen. All unser Bestreben sollte in eine solche Richtung gehen und alten, jetzigen Un-Sinn beenden.

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Probably the best JavaScript book today

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Probably the best JavaScript book today

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4.0 out of 5 stars Good explanations and details

4.0 out of 5 stars A poignant book of bold claims about the best way to code. Entertaining and informative.

5.0 out of 5 stars Un libro che ogni sviluppatore javascript deve assolutamente leggere

5.0 out of 5 stars Lo ha vuelto a hacer ... muy recomendable.

5.0 out of 5 stars Längst überfällig

Good explanations and details

A poignant book of bold claims about the best way to code. Entertaining and informative.

Un libro che ogni sviluppatore javascript deve assolutamente leggere

Lo ha vuelto a hacer ... muy recomendable.

Längst überfällig