I don't always agree with all of Crockfords opinions (I don't believe the ++ operator to be harmful for example) but I do think that his lectures are brilliant.<p>In fact, his previous lectures at yahoo somewhere around 2007ish have fundamentally changed how I think about JavaScript: what was bad spaghetti once, became real architecture. What I felt was an ugly language became a cool language with some warts.<p>Crockfords lectures began a long process to convert me from "who needs functional programming" to "why does this method here have side effects?" (a route many programmers are probably taking, but for me was the beginning of the journey)<p>And finally, even if you think that you know all about JS, these lectures are still very entertaining to watch, because, IMHO, Crockford is a brilliant speaker.
More talks by Crockford, including this series: <a href="http://yuilibrary.com/theater/douglas-crockford/" rel="nofollow">http://yuilibrary.com/theater/douglas-crockford/</a><p>For something completely different, check out Project Future, Crockford's lecture on Walt Disney's dreams.<p>Scene 6 from the JS series also has slides and Flash video available: <a href="http://yuilibrary.com/theater/douglas-crockford/crockford-loopage/" rel="nofollow">http://yuilibrary.com/theater/douglas-crockford/crockford-lo...</a>
JavaScript is one language where opinions are built not purely based on technological consideration but also a lot of politics. Best part is no matter what who think about the language, you don't really have a choice.<p>Most of the javascript programmers today are merely copy-paste JS programmers who basically just copy paste some iQuery code and modify to suite their own project.<p>A lot of credit goes to Cockford for popularizing Javascript as a core languages and sensitzinf programmers about the differences it shares with other programming languages.