YUI Theater — Douglas Crockford: “Crockford on JavaScript — Volume 1: The Early Years”
February 3, 2010 at 12:44 pm by Eric Miraglia | In YUI Theater | 10 CommentsIn the first part of Douglas Crockford’s five-part series on the JavaScript programming language, he explores the historical context from which JavaScript emerged. But he begins with a little bit of his own history, relating his efforts as a child to build a homemade computer:
I found some pieces of particle board and a saw and I sketched out what it was going to look like, and started sawing. I sawed, and sawed, and sawed. The particle board was really, really hard, and the saw was really, really dull. I sawed for what must have been at least two minutes, and then I gave up. OK, I’m not going to do that. So I probably went into the house and watched television after that. At that time, even at that tender age, it was already obvious that I was going to be a software guy.
For the better part of two hours, Douglas takes you on a historical journey in which you learn about:
- the origin of the eighty-character limit
- the history of punch-cards and their impact on modern programming
- the origin of the term “spaghetti code”
- why accessibility has gone downhill since the days of the Teletype
- why we’re still living with both a carriage return character and a line feed character, and where those concepts originated
- the genealogy of command-line text editors
- what languages like ALGOL, Simula, and Self have to do with JavaScript
- why “the guys who could write for the [Atari] VCS were heroes”
- why innovation in software is slower than innovation in hardware
A few tickets remain for the next four installments of the series, which resumes Friday night with “Chapter 2: And Then There Was JavaScript.” We hope to see you here.
If the video embed below doesn’t show up correctly in your RSS reader of choice, be sure to click through to watch the high-resolution version of the video on YUI Theater or download the video in HD (700MB).
Other Recent YUI Theater Videos:
- John Resig: Testing, Performance Analysis, and jQuery 1.4 — John Resig of Mozilla, creator of the popular jQuery JavaScript library, reviews options for testing and performance analysis in JavaScript and previews the significant changes coming soon in jQuery 1.4.
- Luke Smith: Events Evolved — YUI engineer Luke Smith provides a deep introduction to the YUI 3 event system including its support for DOM events, event delegation, synthetic events, and custom events.
- Satyen Desai: A Widget Walkthrough — YUI engineer Satyen Desai provides a detailed tour of the YUI 3 widget subsystem.
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YUI Theater — John Resig: “Testing, Performance Analysis, and jQuery 1.4″
December 16, 2009 at 8:32 am by Eric Miraglia | In YUI Theater | 4 CommentsJohn Resig (@jeresig) of Mozilla, creator of the popular jQuery JavaScript library, stopped by Yahoo! on Friday for a BayJax meetup and delivered a three-part tech talk, “Testing, Performance Analysis, and jQuery 1.4″.
In the first part of the talk, John reviewed the range of tools available to frontend engineers for unit testing and for analyzing the performance of code. In the latter case, he argues for going beyond pure speed-based benchmarks to structural analyses of performance. By looking at structure, the jQuery team was able to identify and correct bottlenecks, resulting in major performance improvements in the upcoming 1.4 release.
In the second part of the talk (beginning at 49:20 in the video), John reviews some of those jQuery 1.4 changes. In the short third section (beginning at 1:03:15), he looks at some interesting trends he’s noticed in the practical application of new HTML 5 elements — especially in older browsers.
If the video embed below doesn’t show up correctly in your RSS reader of choice, be sure to click through to watch the high-resolution version of the video on YUI Theater.
- Download video (m4v)
- Download slides
- A high-resolution, transcripted version of this talk is available on the YUI Theater site
Other Recent YUI Theater Videos:
- Luke Smith: Events Evolved — YUI engineer Luke Smith provides a deep introduction to the YUI 3 event system including its support for DOM events, event delegation, synthetic events, and custom events.
- Todd Kloots: YUI 3 Sugar — YUI engineer Todd Kloots presents an indispensable introduction to YUI 3’s powerful suite of tools.
- Douglas Crockford: The State and Future of JavaScript — Yahoo! JavaScript Architect Douglas Crockford discusses the recent ECMA5 development process and efforts to improve the language in the future.
- Brendan Eich: ECMA Harmony and the Future of JavaScript — Brendan Eich, the creator of the world’s most popular programming language, talks about the struggle over the ES4 proposal and how it resulted in a specific set of proposals for ES5.
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YUI Theater — Todd Kloots: “Building Accessible Widgets with YUI 3″
November 23, 2009 at 8:39 am by Eric Miraglia | In Accessibility, YUI Theater | No CommentsWe wrap up YUI Theater coverage of YUICONF 2009 with a talk from Todd Kloots (@toddkloots) on the accessibility features of YUI 3: “Building Accessible Widgets with YUI 3.” Todd covers YUI’s support for keyboard handling, focus styling and management, ARIA roles and states, and much more. (Don’t miss Todd’s other YUICONF talk, “YUI 3 Sugar,” which is a great primer on other hidden gems in the library.)
If the video embed below doesn’t show up correctly in your RSS reader of choice, be sure to click through to watch the high-resolution version of the video on YUI Theater; the downloadable version is much smaller, optimized as it is for iPods, iPhones, and other handheld devices.
The Full Roster of YUICONF 2009 Videos on YUI Theater:
- Douglas Crockford: The State and Future of JavaScript — Yahoo! JavaScript Architect Douglas Crockford discusses the recent ECMA5 development process and efforts to improve the language in the future.
- Brendan Eich: ECMA Harmony and the Future of JavaScript — Brendan Eich, the creator of the world’s most popular programming language, talks about the struggle over the ES4 proposal and how it resulted in a specific set of proposals for ES5.
- Luke Smith: Events Evolved — YUI engineer Luke Smith provides a deep introduction to the YUI 3 event system including its support for DOM events, event delegation, synthetic events, and custom events.
- Todd Kloots: YUI 3 Sugar — YUI engineer Todd Kloots presents an indispensable introduction to YUI 3’s powerful suite of tools.
- Isaac Schlueter: Solving Problems with YUI 3 — YUI engineer Isaac Schlueter works through a real-world use case of building YUI 3’s forthcoming AutoComplete widget.
- Dav Glass: Contributing to YUI — YUI engineer Dav Glass introduces you to the YUI Gallery and steps through the process of making contributions to the YUI project.
- Allen Rabinovich: YUI 3 Infographics — YUI engineer Allen Rabinovich discusses the YUI 3 Charts implementation, currently under development.
- Reid Burke: Building YAP Applications with YUI — YUI engineer Reid Burke discusses the Yahoo! Application Platform and how you can use it, along with YUI, to reach Yahoo!’s vast audience.
- Matt Sweeney: YUI 3 Performance — YUI architect Matt Sweeney reviews principles of high-performance web development and looks at how best to implement those principles in YUI 3-based projects.
- Satyen Desai: A Widget Walkthrough — YUI engineer Satyen Desai provides a detailed tour of the YUI 3 widget subsystem.
- Todd Kloots: Building Accessible Widgets with YUI 3 — YUI engineer Todd Kloots demonstrates the accessibility toolkit built into YUI 3.
- Chad Auld: Introducing PHP Loader — Chad Auld of Yahoo! introduces the YUI PHP Loader, a flexible tool for loading modular JavaScript and CSS projects.
- Eric Ferraiuolo: Web App Development with YUI 3 — Eric Ferraiuolo of Oddnut Software talks about the nuances of deploying real-world web applications using YUI 3.
- Ron Adams: Automated Integration Testing with YUI Test, Selenium and Hudson — Yahoo! engineer Ron Adams discusses the creation of automated QA workflows that combine YUI Test, Selenium and Hudson to automate JavaScript unit tests.
- Stephen Woods: Creating Beautiful Documentation with YUI Doc — Yahoo! frontend engineer Stephen Woods provides a guided tour to YUI’s documentation engine, YUI Doc. YUI Doc is language-agnostic and can be used to document a variety of project styles.
- Matt Snider: Introducing the YUI 2.8.0 Storage Utility — Matt Snider, the lead frontend engineer for Mint.com (recently acquired by Intuit), contributed the YUI Storage Utility in the 2.8.0 release. In this session, he provides an overview of the Storage Utility’s features and the nuances of the various storage backends.
- Luke Smith: Debugging in YUI 3 — YUI engineer Luke Smith discusses the fine art of debugging web applications, looking at general tools and techniques and providing a few specific hints about debugging in YUI 3.
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YUI Theater — Isaac Schlueter: “Solving Problems with YUI 3″
November 20, 2009 at 9:52 am by Eric Miraglia | In YUI Theater | 1 CommentIsaac Schlueter (@izs) is developing the YUI 3 version of AutoComplete. In this YUICONF 2009 session, “Solving Problems with YUI 3,” he shows you how he’s working with the core YUI 3 toolkit to address the various challenges inherent in developing a complex widget.
If the video embed below doesn’t show up correctly in your RSS reader of choice, be sure to click through to watch the high-resolution version of the video on YUI Theater; the downloadable version is much smaller, optimized as it is for iPods, iPhones, and other handheld devices.
Other Recent YUI Theater Videos:
- Luke Smith: Events Evolved
- Todd Kloots: YUI 3 Sugar
- Dav Glass: Contributing to YUI
- Allen Rabinovich: YUI 3 Infographics
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More from Isaac
Isaac’s tech talk with Matt Hackett from the September Bayjax event, “Server-side JavaScript,” is available with a full transcription on YUI Theater.
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YUI Theater — Reid Burke: “Building YAP Applications with YUI”
November 19, 2009 at 9:40 am by Eric Miraglia | In YUI Theater | No CommentsThe Yahoo! Application Platform (YAP) allows you to write programs that run on the Yahoo! network — on the Yahoo! home page, My Yahoo!, and beyond. Reid Burke (@reid) of the YAP team came to YUICONF 2009 to talk not only about YAP but about how you can use YUI 2 within your YAP applications (we wrote about this on YUIBlog not long ago).
If the video embed below doesn’t show up correctly in your RSS reader of choice, be sure to click through to watch the high-resolution version of the video on YUI Theater; the downloadable version is much smaller, optimized as it is for iPods, iPhones, and other handheld devices.
Other Recent YUI Theater Videos:
- Luke Smith: Events Evolved
- Todd Kloots: YUI 3 Sugar
- Isaac Schlueter: Solving Problems with YUI 3
- Dav Glass: Contributing to YUI
Subscribing to YUI Theater:
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YUI Theater — Todd Kloots: “YUI 3 Sugar”
November 18, 2009 at 6:38 pm by Eric Miraglia | In YUI Theater | No CommentsTodd Kloots (@toddkloots) gave two talks at YUICONF 2009. In this session, he explores what he regards as the hidden gems of YUI 3 — the useful methods and properties found throughout the library’s core modules that help your write fast, stable, terse code. If you use YUI 3, you owe it to yourself to make time to take in this session…you’ll be glad you did.
If the video embed below doesn’t show up correctly in your RSS reader of choice, be sure to click through to watch the high-resolution version of the video on YUI Theater; the downloadable version is much smaller, optimized as it is for iPods, iPhones, and other handheld devices.
Other Recent YUI Theater Videos:
- Luke Smith: Events Evolved
- Isaac Schlueter: Solving Problems with YUI 3
- Dav Glass: Contributing to YUI
- Allen Rabinovich: YUI 3 Infographics
Subscribing to YUI Theater:
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YUI Theater — Allen Rabinovich: “YUI 3 Infographics”
November 18, 2009 at 1:51 pm by Eric Miraglia | In YUI Theater | 3 CommentsAllen Rabinovich spoke at YUICONF 2009 last month about the future of the YUI Charts project. He and colleague Tripp Bridges are hard at work on the next generation of the product, and in this session Allen talks through the thinking behind the new architecture and what we can expect as the YUI 3 version comes to fruition.
If the video embed below doesn’t show up correctly in your RSS reader of choice, be sure to click through to watch the high-resolution version of the video on YUI Theater; the downloadable version is much smaller, optimized as it is for iPods, iPhones, and other handheld devices.
Other Recent YUI Theater Videos:
- Luke Smith: Events Evolved
- Todd Kloots: YUI 3 Sugar
- Isaac Schlueter: Solving Problems with YUI 3
- Dav Glass: Contributing to YUI
Subscribing to YUI Theater:
Share and extend: Bookmark with Yahoo! My Web | Bookmark with del.icio.us | digg it! | reddit!

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