Linked by Jeff Boes on Wed 21st Feb 2007 04:32 UTC
Features, Office The Book of JavaScript (2nd edition) by "thau!" (Dave Thau, according to the book's companion website) is a new and comprehensive introduction to the JavaScript language presented in an entertaining, practical format. I was provided a review copy by the publisher, No Starch Press. I have significant practical experience with JavaScript, so I do not consider myself in the target audience for this book; however, I still found much of it useful so it will remain as a valuable reference on my bookshelf.
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fretinator
Member since:
2005-07-06

"So, you're a Java programmer. Good, our web team needs a lot of javascript..."

That statement always makes me want to scream and run out of the room. I really wish Netscape had called it webscript, or browserscript, or something like that.

Am I alone in this feeling?

Sphinx Member since:
2005-07-09

Hey enrages me. I feel exactly the same way about the 'C' shell too.

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fretinator Member since:
2005-07-06

I think the bottom line is that the people involved in hiring programmers often have so little knowledge about the subject.

[Warning, begin off-topic rant]
Where I live, .NET is the big thing. I always get these questions about whether I am a C# developer or a VB.NET developer. I try to explain to them that in the .NET world the two are almost the same. You are coding the exact same API, and that I wouldn't trust a programmer who couldn't translate code between the two. When I say this, all I see are glazed eyes. To the people who do the hiring, they are as different as VB6 and Visual C++. I finally just gave up trying to explain it, and just made sure I had equal experience with both.

I mean, can it really be that hard to change:

Dim frmNew as Form
frmNew = new Form()
frmNew.text = "My Form"

To:

Form frmNew;
frmNew = new Form();
frmNew.text = "My Form";

Wow, what a magical transformation!

Granted, there are some subtle differences - keyword differences (shared vs static), initialization differences, etc, but they are trivial compared to the old days of Visual C++ vs. VB6. In fact, I think the differences are more mindset than anything - geek snobs vs. code cowboys (I'll let you decide which is which ;} )

[End off-topic rant]

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Savior Member since:
2006-09-02

So true. Ironically, it was originally meant to be "livescript", but later changed to javascript, because it was released at the same time as the java-enabled Netscape. Apparently, they were confused about it themselves ;)

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Joe User Member since:
2005-06-29

This is so true... I hear it all the time, people saying their site is done in Java, and the extension is .php, or programers who say they know Java, and then when you talk about JSP, netbeans, servlets, they don't know what you're talking about, then you say they are probably talking about Javascript, and they say "Yes, Javascript, or Java, same thing, every site uses Java these days". Too sad.

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Jon Dough Member since:
2005-11-30

Well, Under ECMA standard 262, it's known as ECMAScript.

http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-262.h...

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Sphinx Member since:
2005-07-09

Thanks, I'd almost forgotten.

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