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by just2n 4831 days ago
TGP is mostly dogma. The title should make that very clear, but unfortunately, as usual, Crockford is short sighted so the title of his book is misleading, implying you might learn something about the language by reading it.

A much more appropriate title would've been "JavaScript: Crockford's Best Practices for Experienced JavaScripters", or "What's Wrong With JavaScript According to Crockford." Then it's pretty clear what the book is doing, and doesn't trick readers into thinking it's an introductory or learning book.

A few of Crockford's opinions are fairly widely accepted as good advice, but much of it is controversial at best, and in practice incorrect or misguided.

If you are considering buying it, just watch the talk instead: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQVTIJBZook.

As for the article: it's mostly sound advice. I will reiterate reading the source to underscore and backbone. I started recommending this lately to people after they get comfortable with the language. Many popular patterns and techniques are used in these code bases and they're very approachable from a reading perspective. I read both a few months ago to get up to speed on a new project and I found it quite enjoyable compared to reading the likes of jQuery or Angular.