The most interesting two persons around JavaScript are Douglas Crockford and John Resig.
Within the two last years, the work of these two gentleman has made a profound change in my way of looking at the JavaScript programming language.
Crockford has introduced the JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) and had several lectures about JavaScript, most of them available at YUI theather. Latest one, titled "Ajax performance", is available at yuiblog.org. He also happens to be the father of JSlint (JavaScript verifier) and JSmin (JavaScript minifier).
John Resig founded the jQuery JavaScript library which enables unobtrusive and smooth use of the language within the browser.
The next time I will be having any classes of JavaScript, the content will most likely be totally different of what they were in 2005. The subjects of the classes could include the following items:
- History and background of JavaScript
- Language structure
- DOM
- Cross browser implementations
- Unobtrusive usage
- Libraries and namespacing
- SEO and client side load optimisation
- Developer tools
- Mash ups
- Security
- ...
In one of the lectures by Mr Crockford, he suggested watching the movie "Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948)". The story in the film can easily be related to any software project. Perhaps it should be preliminary material for the classes.
"The key to optimization is work avoidance."