I began reading JavaScript: The Good Parts with the intention on improving my terrible JavaScript skills. Instead, I received an opinionated rant on everything wrong with pre-ES5 JavaScript.

Likes

The book made me appreciate learning JavaScript in a post-ES7 world. I feel like a fucking savant for being able to use arrow functions and async await. I might as well be conjuring flames and doing mind control for how user-friendly the language is now.

Dislikes

Most of the problems I have with this book stem from the fact that it was published a year before ES5 was released. The author spends a deal of time ripping apart language bugga-boos that have since been fixed or improved.

I’d like to see a more up to date version of the book. It’s a great idea, and not a bad way to learn some history.