Herding Code 138 – Lightning Round with Douglas Crockford

While at Software Passion Summit, K Scott did a series of four Lightning Round interviews, starting with Douglas Crockford.

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 138 – Douglas Crockford [audio://herdingcode.com/wp-content/uploads/HerdingCode-0138-Douglas-Crockford.mp3]

Show Notes:

K Scott asks Douglas what he meant when he said that the human brain wasn’t designed for this sort of work? What were we designed for? Douglas talks about how our minds are selected for hunting and gathering, but we have to work with what we’ve got, relating this to some tips for defensive programming.
K Scott asks about JSLint. Douglas talks about how he thinks all languages should have code quality tools.
The increment operator came over from C++ due to pointer operations. Bad idea?
K Scott asks where he sees JavaScript going. Are things moving too fast, or too slow? Douglas talks about the difficulty of supporting multiple browsers and versions. EcmaScript 5didn’t break things, but EcmaScript 6 is making some bets to allow for that.
EcmaScript 5 introduced "use strict" – how does that work? Douglas talks about the use of useless expressions.
K Scott asks what developers should be doing today. Douglas says developers should be working in the intersection of EcmaScript 3 and the strict parts of EcmaScript 5 to be ready for EcmaScript 6.
That’s it! Scott runs off to tackle some more lightning round interviews.

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