Douglas Crockford

Don’t worry about anything. Just do what you can and be the best you can be.

It turns out that style matters in programming for the same reason that it matters in writing. It makes for better reading.

Computer programs are the most complex things that humans make.

Most programming languages contain good parts and bad parts. I discovered that I could be better programmer by using only the good parts and avoiding the bad parts.

Good architecture is necessary to give programs enough structure to be able to grow large without collapsing into a puddle of confusion.

JavaScript is the world’s most misunderstood programming language.

In JavaScript, there is a beautiful, elegant, highly expressive language that is buried under a steaming pile of good intentions and blunders.

Software is usually expected to be modified over the course of its productive life. The process of converting one correct program into a different correct program is extremely challenging.

That hardly ever happens is another way of saying ‘it happens’.

One of the things I’ve been pushing is code reading. I think that is the most useful thing that a community of programmers can do for each other—spend time on a regular basis reading each other’s code.

I think the best way to make JavaScript better would be to make it smaller. If we could just get it down to what it does really well and remove the features that add little or no value, it’s actually a better language.

Readability of code is now my first priority. It’s more important than being fast, almost as important as being correct, but I think being readable is actually the most likely way of making it correct.

Part of what makes programming difficult is most of the time we’re doing stuff we’ve never done before.

I think of myself as a writer. Sometimes I write in English and sometimes I write in JavaScript.

Mathematics is important in programming, but it’s just one of a lot of things that are important. If you overemphasize the math then you underemphasize stuff which might be even more important, such as literacy.

JavaScript is the only language that I’m aware of that people feel they don’t need to learn before they start using it.

JavaScript, purely by accident, has become the most popular programming language in the world.