10 things you need to know about JavaScript
JavaScript seems so simple that many people dont even bother to learn the language while using it. And yet it works! However, it turned out to be one of the reasons why JavaScript was dramatically misunderstood . Yes, it looks like a language of the C-family and, when starting with JavaScript, programers are just writing in C, Java, PHP or other language style. But JavaScript is no subset of any of these languages. You may find JavaScript even a superior language, but you have to know how to do things in JavaScript way. You cannot learn this from the documentation. References and, even more so, the specs are not meant to cover programming patterns, but the language itself. Of course, there is plenty of books and you may find some (e.g. Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja by John Resig, Learning JavaScript Design Patterns by Addy Osmani ) pretty useful. Besides, you can learn straight from the code, since we are lucky to have tons of substantial JavaScript applications available in open-source (jquery.com, yuilibrary.com/projects/yui3/, backbonejs.org, modernizr.com, raphaeljs.com and so on). In either case you may stumble over programming techniques unknown to you. Ive collected here some commonly used practices which may help you.
